PARIS — Much of France was in mourning and looking for answers on Tuesday over the crash of two helicopters in a remote part of Argentina that killed 10 people, three of them French sports stars taking part in a glitzy new reality TV show.

Olympic champion swimmer Camille Muffat, Olympic boxer and bronze-medallist Alexis Vastine, and pioneering sailor Florence Arthaud died in Monday’s crash. They had been among the contestants in the reality TV show “Dropped.”

The helicopters apparently collided in the air near Villa Castelli, about 730 miles (1,170 kilometres) northwest of Buenos Aires, La Rioja regional Secretary of Security Cesar Angulo told TN television. All 10 people on board — eight French nationals and two Argentine pilots — were killed.

Photographs and mobile-phone footage showed the burning wreckage of the helicopters in dry scrubland of a sparsely populated area along the Andes mountain range that separates Argentina and Chile.

The crash was believed to be one the deadliest incidents yet related to reality TV shows, a sub-genre of which involves taking celebrities and others to far-flung places to face challenges against the natural elements, both physical and mental.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France’s foreign ministry is in contact with authorities in Argentina to determine what caused the crash. President Francois Hollande expressed the “immense sadness” about those who died.

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for possible involuntary manslaughter, which is to be conducted by a research unit of the French air transport police, a French police official said.

The deaths were likely to place new attention on risks involved with such shows. Two years ago, TF1 — France’s leading private-sector network, which aired the program — cancelled the season of the “Survivor”-like show “Koh Lanta” after a 25-year-old participant died of a heart attack on the first day of filming in Cambodia.

Show producer Adventure Line Productions was behind both programs. In a statement, the company said its staffers were “devastated” and “share the deep pain of the families and loved ones.”

Nonce Paolini, CEO of TF1, said: “We don’t know the circumstances but what I can tell you is that, obviously, such a program was made to bring happiness to all, and I think that both the technicians and the champions were happy to do this show.”

“A tragic accident has unfortunately created a terrible shock for all of us.”

Angulo, the security secretary, said one of the helicopters belonged to La Rioja province and the other to neighbouring Santiago del Estero province.

“The helicopter from La Rioja was a Eurocopter with a capacity to hold six people. It appears to have brushed against the other helicopter from Santiago del Estero shortly after takeoff,” the statement from the provincial government said.

AP Photo/Jose AlamoTwo helicopters with passengers who were filming a reality show crashed Monday in the remote area of northwest Argentina, killing all 10 people on board both aircrafts, authorities said.

The crew had arrived Sunday in Villa Castelli, where it had previously filmed a version of “Dropped” for Switzerland and Denmark, said Mayor Andres Navarrete. The remaining victims were identified as Laurent Sbasnik, Lucie Mei-Dalby, Volodia Guinard, Brice Guilbert and Edouard Gilles, as well as pilots Juan Carlos Castillo and Roberto Abate.

The production company declined immediate comment about their roles in the show.

French Secretary of State for Sport Thierry Braillard said on the BFM TV channel that “French sport has lost three stars this morning.”

Vastine, 28, won a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and lost in the quarterfinals four years later in London amid a sporting controversy that led him to break down in tears. He had reportedly vowed to win gold at the 2016 games in Rio.

Muffat, 25, won gold in the 400-meter freestyle in London, plus a silver medal in the 200-meter freestyle and a bronze in the 4 by 200-meter freestyle relay. She had since retired from swimming to focus on her personal life.

AP Photo/Gabriel GonzalezPeople gather near the smoking remains of a helicopter that crashed with another near Villa Castelli in the La Rioja province of Argentina, Monday, March 9, 2015.

But perhaps the best known was Arthaud, 57, a pioneer in sailing. In 1990, she became the first woman to win the famed Route du Rhum race, a trans-Atlantic single-handed yacht race between Brittany and the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

Other “Dropped” contestants on hand included former France and Arsenal striker Sylvain Wiltord, ice skating champion Philippe Candeloro, former Olympic swimming champion Alain Bernard and veteran cyclist Jeannie Longo. None of them was involved in the accident.

Candeloro, speaking on RTL radio, said the other contestants were at their hotel Tuesday awaiting arrival of French consular officials.

Reality TV shows can appeal to former adrenaline-powered star athletes who remain often famous and beloved long after their careers are over, and are looking for new challenges or fun.

William Forgues, Muffat’s companion, told i-Tele cable news channel that she was instructed not to reveal details about the show filming, but “told everybody that it was great. She was not forced (to do things). She was where she wanted to be.”

Rio de Janeiro – The sales agent wonders whether she might arrange a helicopter tour so I could have a better look at the area where I am considering buying an apartment at a new seaside golf course being built for the 2016 Rio Olympics.

I felt a little sheepish posing as a prospective buyer of one of the condominiums, which according to a price list start at US$2.8-million and rise well above US$10-million for the 1,300 square-metre suites nearest the ocean. But it was the only way to get a glimpse of plans for the ultra-luxury complex, known as Riserva Golf. The residences are being built on a unique stretch of lush, undeveloped land most Cariocas believed was protected as part of the Marapendi nature preserve.

“The facade, with a marble and glass skin, induces a feeling of levitating over a spectacular landscape [that would] bring nature right into owners’ homes” is the over-the-top description in a lavish two-kilogram tome prepared for potential residents.

“We are not a First World country. We are part of the developing world. There is only one chance to rescue the city. The Games are a catalyst…”

Ocupe Golfe, which has set up a small, ramshackle camp across from the complex, says the US25-million course, is “an environmental crime that must be stopped,” said Flavia Rezende, an environmental engineering student at Veiga de Almedia University.

The 44.5-hectare course uses millions of litres of water a day at a time of drought, she says. The course and the condo development also threaten the existence of endangered Fluminense swallowtail butterflies, owls, fish, reptiles and rare beach flowers only found in Rio so the city’s elite would have another place to live and play.

Ocupe Golfe says the sport’s return to Olympics for the first time since the 1904 Games in St. Louis is a transparent attempt to boost global television ratings. It has also been used as a pretext by developers and politicians to exploit one of the city’s last pristine areas to build condominiums for the super-rich.

Rio’s organizers counter that development of the land has been done legally and with private, not public money, the water being accessed would mostly be reusable and special measures have been taken to protect the flora and fauna.

“That used to be an empty area and now the flora and fauna are coming back,” said Joaquin Monteiro, president of Rio’s Municipal Olympic Committee. “We are keeping track of the animals … I don’t know why they are complaining.”

Explaining the organizers’ philosophy, he said, “We are not a First World country. We are part of the developing world. There is only one chance to rescue the city. The Games are a catalyst…”

“[The apartments] are not huge or luxurious, but are according to our reality. There are no venues with marble or red carpets. What we are trying to do is to squeeze 50 years of development into seven years.”

Such talk does not convince Tomas Ramos, a lawyer with Rio’s Human Rights Commission.

“There are things done in the name of the Olympics that have been done on the margins of the law and with a disregard for human rights and environmental justice,” he said.

“This is not a crisis for those who want to transform the city. Like [soccer’s] World Cup, this is a business opportunity. In the name of patriotism, we must come together because if we do that legitimizes the changes and marginalizes the critics.”

“I don’t know one Brazilian who golfs,” Ms. Rezende said. “This is only being built for rich people.”

Mr. Monteiro acknowledged golf was not popular in Brazil, but said having a world-class public course would be a boon to tourism as there were two million golfers in the world.

The golf controversy is one of several that have beset Olympic organizers in a city where millions of Brazilians live in crowded, often violent slums known as favelas, while a lucky few lead lives of tremendous privilege.

There has also been unease over unresolved water quality and public health issues in the smelly bay, where Olympic sailing is to take place. Up to 1,000 people have also been evicted from their homes to build a bus expressway near the biggest of the four main hubs for the Games.

Mr. Monteiro, who is a scion of one of Rio’s most famous families, said improving transport had been the city’s top priority. It was always difficult because the area was interrupted by many mountains that were the biggest urban forests in the world.

The Olympics provided the impetus to build 150 kilometres of high-speed bus lanes and greatly extend the city’s subway network “in order to change the way people move”’ he said.

Where before 20% of the population used public transport, 60% would do so by 2020. What he called “the most complex mobility project in the Americas” would greatly reduce air pollution, particularly downtown.

While the Games faced “challenges, we believe they are under control,” he added.

For its part, the International Olympic Committee has not said much about such issues, other than it has confidence in Rio’s organizers.

Back at the protest site, officers from the Guarda Municipale showed up to tell the few demonstrators — in a case of probably intentional irony — they would be cited for causing environmental damage because one of their banners had touched city grass.
“Brazilians love sports and I am in favour of sports, too,” Ms. Rezende said.

“But this golf course has devastated a beautiful place. They have cut down hundreds of trees to build a parking lot at the Olympic marina, where the water is badly polluted, and to build roads for the Olympics they’ve evicted families from their homes. None of this is right.”

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/the-gulf-in-rio-over-golf-ultra-luxury-development/feed/0]]>stdBrazil_Christ_StatueNational Post View: Bidding for the Olympics is a rigged game we shouldn’t be playinghttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/ed022715-editorial2
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/ed022715-editorial2#commentsTue, 24 Feb 2015 20:26:57 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=706045

It says nothing good about the Olympic brand that Matthew Fisher’s reporting from Rio de Janeiro for the National Post this week hardly even ranks as controversial. Take Tuesday’s story: in the service of spending some $15 billion to throw a giant party for the global elite, he reported, games organizers had turfed some 800 poor families from their homes.

It could be worse. They are at least being compensated, albeit hardly lavishly: Rio has a long and bitter history of forced, uncompensated relocations. Still, it’s an ugly spectacle. You have to wonder what the same $15 billion could do for Brazil’s poor.

The good news is that the bloated, profligate and corrupt model of sports mega-events has never been in lesser repute. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) may not be as corrupt as it used to be, but the bid process is still a greasy, glad-handing monstrosity. Last year, Oslo — capital of arguably the most winter sports-mad country on earth — dropped out of the running for the 2022 Winter Olympics in the face of what one commentator called “insane demands that [IOC apparatchiks] be treated like the king of Saudi Arabia.” That leaves only Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the running — not exactly a clash of the titans.

The more the IOC has to turn to, shall we say, non-traditional markets, the greater the risks to its reputation. It can ask FIFA, the world soccer body, about that. Warm-up matches for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa were fixed by bent referees on behalf of Asian gangsters. Brazil’s World Cup was a bonanza for pimps peddling sex with children. Qatar won the chance to spend an obscene $220-billion on the 2022 World Cup thanks to some $6.6-million in bribes. The death toll among migrant World Cup construction workers in Qatar is reportedly in the hundreds — with seven years to go. Not that FIFA cares, but it is essentially presiding over a humanitarian disaster.

As usual, any number of impressive First World cities are mulling bids for the 2024 Summer Olympics. (2020’s are in Tokyo.) But the unprepossessing Beijing/Almaty showdown offers some hope that change might be afoot. Toronto wisely abandoned its flirtation with the 2024 Games over the ludicrous prospect of a $60 million bid price. There are civilized cities and countries all over the world that could host an Olympics or a World Cup, with little or no new infrastructure needed, if the IOC or FIFA asked nicely and proposed non-punitive financial terms. But so long as they’re willing to cozy up to oil-drenched emirs and cartoon villains like Vladimir Putin, the bid process is a rigged game those cities and countries shouldn’t be playing.

Six and a half years after the performance that earned it, the shot putter celebrated his achievement in his hometown of Kamloops, B.C., and in the fieldhouse where he trains.

Armstrong was finally presented with his bronze medal from the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. He is the first Canadian to win an Olympic medal in shot put.

In the infield of the indoor track, Armstrong stepped onto a low platform, hockey player Hayley Wickenheiser hung the bronze medal around his neck and the Canadian anthem played.

The ceremony coincided with Sunday’s celebration of the Canadian flag’s 50th birthday. Armstrong collected one from his mother Judy and paraded the Maple Leaf in front of hundreds of people who came to cheer the country’s first Olympic throwing medal since 1912.

“To have our community come out like this, a lot of people I haven’t seen for a long, long time, it just really hits my heart,” Armstrong said. “To have it here in this facility means a lot to me.

“I’ve had support from the time I was nine years old in the track club.”

It wasn’t until 2013 that third place was stripped from Andrei Mikhnevich of Belarus. He tested positive for a stimulant and steroids in a re-test of stored urine samples from the 2005 world track and field championships.

Armstrong finished fourth in Beijing. He missed bronze by less than a centimetre with a Canadian-record throw in the Bird’s Nest Stadium.

“It just shows if listen to your coach and you’re dedicated and you work hard, you can do it clean,” Armstrong said. “I’m a prime example of that.
“I was extremely happy with my own performance. To go to Beijing and get a new national record, to compete the best I’d ever competed on that day is very hard to do.”

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff BassettThe medal re-allocation came more than six years after Armstrong's performance in Beijing.

The Canadian Olympic Committee arranged Sunday’s ceremony and said attendance was about 1,200. COC president Marcel Aubut said he was “over the moon” to hand Armstrong what was the original medal, not a replica.

“Justice is being done. I love this too,” Aubut said. “The cheaters, there is no room for them in this game.”

Armstrong’s mother Judy said the wait has been difficult at times as the wheels of justice turned slowly.

“For him, I would say it was probably hard at times because he kept wondering in his mind ’am I going to get it, will they give it to me?”’ she said. “There’s so many hoops to go through.

“I had this vision in my mind I guess of him on the podium and them playing O Canada and today fulfilled that.”

A four-time Olympic gold medallist in hockey, Wickenheiser was the International Olympic Committee’s representative because she serves on the athletes’ commission.

She felt for Armstrong, who wasn’t able to experience his moment of glory on that day in Beijing.

“It’s probably a bittersweet moment for him, but I’m just happy that it happened,” she said.

AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Ryan Remiorz, FileCanada's Dylan Armstrong, from Kamloops,British Columbia, sits on the bench after missing the bronze medal on the last throw during the shot put final at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Dylan Armstrong received an Olympic bronze after a competitor was banned for doping at the 2008 Beijing Games.

It was also a day of mixed feelings for Abby Hoffman, a former Canadian Olympian who serves on the IAAF’s anti-doping committee.

“I suppose it’s kind of vindication on the one hand of the work that we do . . . we can catch people long after the fact and made amends and present medals to the right people,” Hoffman said.

“On the other hand, it’s also a great reminder we’ve got more work to do because catching people on the day and making sure competition is fair, the right medals are given to the right people at the right time, that’s the ultimate objective.”

The six-foot-four Armstrong was about 20 pounds lighter than his usual competition weight of 345 pounds. He lost some weight before undergoing elbow surgery Dec. 29.

The elbow injury hampered his performance at the 2012 Summer Games in London where he finished fifth. Armstrong hasn’t yet committed to any competitions in 2015, but he intends to compete at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“Right now I’m just trying to get back into throwing shape,” he said. “My strength is coming along quite easily. It’s going to be more of a speed thing and a technical progression moving into Rio de Janeiro. I’m motivated. I’m looking forward to competing there.”

Bravo to Norway for withdrawing its application to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics in Oslo. Nothing better illustrates the disrepute into which bidding for the games has fallen, or how drastically the process needs to be changed.

This is Norway, remember, whose 5 million people are mad-crazy for any sport involving skis or skates. Norway, which has won more Winter Olympics medals than any other country. Norway, whose per capita gross domestic product is more than $100,000.

If anyone has the desire, weather conditions, facilities and cash to put on the Winter Olympics, it is the Norwegians.

Even so, the government has pulled out in the face of public opposition, an apparently contagious condition. Germany and Switzerland — also major skiing nations — initially planned bids but changed their minds after losing referendums on the idea. Lviv, in Ukraine, withdrew for obvious reasons in June, while Poland’s Krakow pulled its bid in May after 70 percent of the city voted against it. Only China and Kazakhstan remain — two authoritarian regimes with poor human-rights records and no need to consider what their people think.

This popular recoil from Olympics hosting is a rational response to the excess and corruption of the games in Sochi, Russia, last February, and the painful spectacle of Rio de Janeiro struggling to deliver the next Summer Olympics — not to mention the corruption in Qatar, where hundreds of construction workers have died in the effort to build air-conditioned soccer stadiums in the desert for the 2022 World Cup.

The International Olympic Committee says it understands the problem and is drawing up reforms. If so, they clearly weren’t ready in time for the 2022 bids. One reason Oslo won’t be hosting the games is that it involves 7,000 pages of IOC requirements, which include a free Samsung mobile phone and service for all IOC members and a cocktail party with the king, paid for by the royal family. The budget for the games (invariably a wild underestimate) was to be $5.5 billion.

After Norway threw up its hands, the IOC issued a testy response, berating the country for missing the “opportunity” to accept the committee’s $880 million contribution and boldly claiming that the Sochi Games broke even. Maybe they did on operating costs, but certainly not on the estimated $50 billion that Russia spent in total.

The best way to fix this broken process would be to get rid of it, and give the Summer and Winter Olympics permanent homes on land under international control. Or pick a handful of permanent locations around the world, so the games could rotate among continents? If even that idea is too radical, there’s plenty that could be done to pare the games back to a size that would make cities want to host them.

National Portrait Gallery/APRobert Frost

The cost of putting together a successful bid for the games has at least tripled since proposals were drawn up for the 2010 Olympics. The games themselves have gotten too big: Capacity requirements force cities to ignore their existing sports venues, and the number of hotel rooms needed for athletes, Olympic officials and media — almost 25,000 — use up all the existing space the average host city has to offer. That means a new hotel room for every spectator.

The huge construction cost — and later redundancy — all this implies is made worse by IOC rules that prevent the games from being held across borders or among several cities. If the Olympics must remain a traveling circus, the IOC needs to slash the number of demands it makes on host cities and remove restrictions that prevent a better use of existing stadiums. Those who run the Olympic movement must recognize the games exist to showcase sporting excellence — not organizers’ egos or the spending power of governments anxious to impress the world.

For a brief two weeks every two years, Canada’s top amateur athletes become household names as they are thrust into the national spotlight, with broadcasters providing wall-to-wall coverage of the Olympic Games on television and online. Then, just as quickly as they are embraced, our amateur athletes disappear from TV.

In the years between the games, amateur athletics fight to find room on TV schedules. Few channels purchase sports content of any kind, and those that do tend to focus on professional sports.

There was a time when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) mandated the coverage of amateur sport, as a condition of the licences for specialty sports channels. Sadly, despite the Canadian Olympic Committee’s (COC) protests, that time has passed.

As a result, the COC recently submitted a proposal to the CRTC to ignite a meaningful national conversation about the future of Canadian amateur sport on media platforms in our country. At stake is nothing short of the very future of amateur athletics, as a part of our shared cultural heritage.

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More than 12.5 million Canadians are directly involved in playing, coaching, officiating and supporting Canadian amateur sports. But it operates under a shroud of anonymity. It is our aim to ensure that amateur sports are accessible in every community across the country. Canadians, wherever they live, should be able to witness the great achievements of our athletes.

It can be argued that, 25 years ago, television coverage of amateur sports was superior to what it is today. How can it be that we have so many more sports networks today, and so few channels that carry amateur sport? Clearly, something must be done. The status quo is failing Canadians.

The sports programming available to Canadians does reflect Canada’s love for hockey and professional sports, but, it doesn’t reflect the majority of sports in Canada — amateur sports. Where are the amateur athletes who rise to stardom during the Olympics? Where are the university student athletes who live and play in communities all across this country? Where are the high school athletes who represent the bright future of Canadian athletics? Where do we see the hours of blood, sweat and tears that go into a medal-winning Olympic performance?

If the Canadian broadcast system was working properly, there would be more than just Canadian junior hockey and the odd university playoff game on television

It is proven that television coverage of amateur sporting events has a ripple effect on the future participation and success of Canada’s athletes. Visibility brings participation, which brings members and their associated fees. This helps augment the funding received from Sport Canada and other sources.

At international athletic events, despite the country’s relatively small population, Canada consistently punches above its weight class. This is a point of national pride, and Canadians deserve the chance to see our athletes compete against the best in the world on national TV. It also brings corporate partners who have an expectation that television coverage will provide them with something in return. An absence of coverage will damage or eliminate these sources of income.

The COC believes the Canadian television industry is the best place for Canadian athletes to deliver performances to a wide audience, helping to garner sponsorship support and to keep their Olympic dreams alive. More importantly, Canadians care. We know this because of the enormous audiences that flock to their screens to view these athletes at the Olympic Games every two years.

Canadians can’t see these athletes shine the rest of the time, because they aren’t on television. Unless we do something, amateur athletics is in danger of disappearing from our television screens altogether. If the Canadian broadcast system was working properly, there would be more than just Canadian junior hockey and the odd university playoff game on television.

The system is broken. Our athletes are counting on us to fix it.

National Post

Christopher R. Overholt is the chief executive officer of the Canadian Olympic Committee.

And it’s a streak he’s hoping to bust when federal Conservatives in the riding on Calgary Signal Hill pick their nominee on Saturday.

Liepert, a former high-profile cabinet minister in Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government, has been embroiled in a nasty challenge of Anders for the Conservative nomination in the new federal riding.

The race has made headlines across the country as the party has declared that incumbents, such as the staunchly-conservative Anders, will no longer be protected in nomination races.

“The ironic thing about this nomination is it’s being watched Canada-wide and the primary reason is because he’s been so controversial and he’s always got this myth about him that he’s almost undefeatable,” said Liepert, 64, in an interview at his campaign office.

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“I guess we’ll find out whether that’s a myth or not. But it is definitely a nomination that I think will be like no other in the next year and a half.”

Signal Hill takes in part of Calgary West, the current riding Anders holds and one he has kept since first being elected in 1997 as a Reform party member and won in five subsequent elections.

Anders describes himself as a social conservative who is pro-life and he has gained notoriety for his sometimes inflammatory statements.

In 2001, he opposed honorary Canadian citizenship for Nelson Mandela and labelled the former South African leader a communist and a terrorist.

He has a strong dislike of China and once compared the 2008 Beijing Olympics to the 1936 Berlin Games, which were held when Germany was under control of Adolf Hitler.

In 2012, Anders was dropped from the Commons veterans affairs committee after he lashed out against a veterans support group, which had criticized him for falling asleep during a committee meeting. He later apologized for saying his critics were NDP “hacks.”

“He’s more well known than he was 10 years ago, but for all the wrong reasons,” said Liepert. “I really think residents are fed up and they’re going to vote with their feet on Saturday.”

The Conservatives protected incumbents from nomination challenges when the party held minority status. But this time, with the Conservatives holding a majority, the party has declared it wants nominations to be “fair and open.”

A request by The Canadian Press for an interview with Anders was rejected this week.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill GravelandFormer Alberta cabinet minister Ron Liepert, who is posing a serious challenge to MP Rob Anders for the Conservative nomination in the Calgary riding of Signal Hill, is interviewed in his campaign office in Calgary on Tuesday, April 8, 2014.

“In a competitive race like this one, Rob is better off door knocking and getting face time with voting members, as opposed to taking national media interviews,” campaign spokesman Joseph Soares said in an email.

Anders has accused Liepert’s campaign of signing up Liberals and NDP supporters in an effort to unseat him. He has released the names of known Liberals who Liepert has recruited.

During the race, Conservative party officials chastised Anders for what they say were misleading phone calls. His campaign placed calls to party members that might have left the impression they were calls from Liepert’s campaign. If the target of the call was unsure about who they would support, the caller proceeded to criticize Liepert.

In a Mar. 27 interview, Anders described himself as the “poster boy” for blue Conservatives.

“What we’ve got here is red Tories who can’t possibly win without relying on Liberals. And they’ve signed up hundreds of people who will not be voting for the federal Conservative Party in the next federal election,” Anders said.

He offered no apologies for the negative tone of the campaign.

“It is what it is. It’s a battle for the soul of the party. It’s a question of whether or not we’re going to be red or we’re going to be blue.”

Political scientist David Taras said Anders — who held off challenges from former Alberta legislature member Jocelyn Burgener in 2000 and Alison Redford in 2004, before she became Alberta premier — could be in trouble this time.

“He’s up against another veteran politician who has an organization and yeah, I think he can lose,” said Taras of Mount Royal University.

“I think there’s an argument that there’s already the scent of desperation in his campaign.”

Liepert, who held the health, energy and finance portfolios as a member of the provincial legislature before opting not to run in the 2012 election, said he’s not taking anything for granted

“It would seem to me if someone has a 17-year track record that they might consider running on that record,” said Liepert.

“There has not been one mention in any of the correspondence coming out of the other camp about what he has done for his constituents. It’s an almost 100 per cent criticism of me.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Brazilian TV is showing footage of a woman apparently being robbed while being interviewed on television about crime near Rio de Janeiro’s main train station.

The images of the interview conducted Wednesday by TV Globo were posted on its G1 internet news portal.

The woman is complaining in the clip about the lack of police presence near the station when the would-be mugger approaches her from behind and rips off what appears to be a gold necklace.

The clip shows the thief fleeing down a busy street, and the reporter is seen chasing him for a few seconds.

The thief, however, was left empty handed. He dropped the necklace, which was returned to the woman.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU7_y0hzolQ&w=640&h=390]

Brazil has been on a push to clean up crime before the World Cup this summer. The preparations for the Cup — and for the summer Olympics in 2016 — have gone less than smoothly for the South American country.

On Thursday, more than 100 employees returned to work at the Arena da Baixada after organizers promised to begin paying the salaries owed to them.

Two other World Cup stadiums are unfinished, including the one hosting the opener in Sao Paulo. Part of the work there was stopped because of a recent worker’s death. The other stadium yet to be completed is in the wetlands city of Cuiaba.

Strike conditions are going less well for work on Olympic facilities.

Striking construction workers stayed off the job at the Olympic Park Thursday — the main cluster of venues for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics — defying a court order for them to return.

The work stoppage began a week ago and comes as the International Olympic Committee is sending top-level advisers to Rio to tackle delays threatening South America’s first Olympics.

A statement from Rio Mais, a consortium building venues at Olympic Park, said workers remained on strike. The work stoppage began April 3 and affects at least 2,000 workers.

A regional labor court ordered the strikers back to work on Wednesday and said a settlement should be negotiated in the next 30 days.

The Brazilian army said gunmen launched at least five attacks against troops in the Rio de Janeiro slum complex occupied on Saturday in a bid to improve security two months before the start of the World Cup soccer tournament.

The army says in a note the attacks were carried out Monday night by pistol-wielding gunmen in the Mare complex of 15 slums in northern Rio.

One motorcyclist was wounded in the arm. None of the troops were wounded.

The occupation is part of the government’s “pacifying police force” strategy aimed at taking over some of Rio’s more than 1,000 slums before Brazil plays host to the World Cup as well as the 2016 Olympics.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel has barred 30 runners, including an Olympic athlete, from leaving the Gaza Strip to participate in a marathon later this week, highlighting Israel’s tight restrictions on travel in and out of the Hamas-ruled territory, Palestinian officials said Tuesday.
In the case of the Olympic runner, Nader Masri, the travel ban was upheld Tuesday by Israel’s Supreme Court. Masri, 34, participated in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Separately, 36 young musicians requested to leave Gaza for a weeklong music competition in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, but were also denied permission, organizers said. An Israeli defense official said a final decision has not been made. The competition begins Wednesday.
The cases underscored Israel’s restrictions on Gaza, which human rights activists argue amount to collective punishment and are often arbitrary. They say the travel ban is part of an Israeli attempt to sever ties between Gaza and the West Bank, territories that lie on opposite ends of Israel and are sought by the Palestinians for a future state, along with east Jerusalem.

AP Photo/Majed HamdanIn this Friday, April 4, 2008 file photo, Palestinian athlete Nader Masri, 28, holds the shirt he will be wearing when competing in the 2008 Olympics, at his home in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip.

Israel and Gaza’s other neighbor, Egypt, have severely limited access to Gaza since the territory was seized by the Islamic militant Hamas in 2007. Virtually all exports from Gaza are banned and most of Gaza’s 1.7 million people cannot travel abroad. Israel considers Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks, a terrorist group.
The Palestinian Olympic Committee said it had asked Israel for permits for the 30 runners to leave Gaza so they could attend the second annual international marathon in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Friday.
Itidal al-Mugrabi, a senior official in the committee, said all requests were denied last month. She said the Bethlehem event, which will also include shorter races, was expected to draw some 700 runners from Europe in addition to local athletes.
After being denied a permit, Masri approached the Israeli rights group Gisha, which appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court.
The judges ruled Tuesday that they could not intervene in the defense minister’s policy considerations, but suggested the military consider more exemptions from the travel ban.
Masri said he was disappointed.
“The ban no doubt limits my ability to challenge other champions from elsewhere,” Masri said. He said he trains daily in the streets and three times a week in a local gym.

AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMSPalestinian Olympian marathon runner Nader al-Masri laces his shoes ahead of a local marathon in Gaza City on April 6, 2014.

Ostensibly, Masri should have stood a good chance of getting the exit permit even under Israel’s stringent criteria.
Those permitted to leave Gaza, at least in principle, include members of the Palestinian Olympic team and the Palestinian soccer team, according to guidelines published in 2011 by the branch of Israel’s military dealing with implementing the policy toward Gaza.
According to that list, exceptions are also made for Gaza residents seeking to attend events in the West Bank sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, the self-rule government of Hamas’ political rival, President Mahmoud Abbas.

AFP PHOTO / SAID KHATIBPalestinian schoolgirls stand in front of a mural during an awareness training session on dangers of unexploded ordnance on April 7, 2014 at a school in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

Maj. Guy Inbar, an Israeli defense official, said Masri’s request was denied because it “does not meet the rules for exceptions for sports events.”
Inbar said the Bethlehem marathon sponsored by the Palestinian Authority “has political overtones,” but did not elaborate. He initially said that others who applied for permits were support staff, but then said he needed to check that information.
Eitan Diamond, the head of Gisha, said underlying Israel’s policy is an attempt to “create a divide between the West Bank and Gaza, to remove Gaza from the consciousness of the Israeli public, to push Gaza away.”
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in 1967. It withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but continues to control access by air, land and sea.
Much of the international community considers the lands captured in 1967 as a single territorial unit, in contrast to Israel’s claim that Gaza is no longer occupied.

Seven years ago, Gary Rosen, then an editor at Commentary magazine, definitively captured the surreal social agony that attends any officially organized junket to an autocratic country.

In “My Short March Through China,” he described how awkward it was to ask tough questions during meetings with Beijing’s bureaucrats — about censorship, human rights, and one-party rule. Human beings are social creatures. And no one — even a conservative American journalist in a communist country — wants to offend his hosts.

We were eager to make a positive impression, to show the right mix of curiosity, appreciation, and politeness

“We were eager to make a positive impression, to show the right mix of curiosity, appreciation, and politeness,” he wrote. “When [our minder] pointed out this or that Chinese achievement, our inclination was to praise it, as if wanting to let the Ministry of Foreign Affairs know that, yes, we really did like the country.”

After the meetings, Mr. Rosen reported, “we would all gather around for a group photo to commemorate the happy event” — never mind the cruelties meted out by the regime for which the photographed functionaries toiled.

But he can at least take solace in the fact his trip did not take place in the heyday of Twitter, or else thousands of people around the world would have seen those images of him grinning away with the likes of the director of China’s “General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine.”

In Russia, on the other hand, all these mortifying moments are being broadcast to the world — thanks to shutterbug Westerners who are only to happy to act as extras in Vladimir Putin’s Olympian PR extravaganza.

This week, The Wall Street Journa reported from “Canada House,” the Canadian Olympic team’s social HQ in Sochi, “which is best known for having a Molson beer refrigerator that can be opened only with a Canadian passport.”

“Stephane Roy of Quebec City, who saw the [Russian President’s] visit [to Canada House], said Putin was treated ‘like a rock star’ by around 300 Canadians who took to calling him ‘Vlad,'” the Journal reports.

If any Canadian politician sought to criminalize “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations,” as Putin’s government has, he would be ostracized as a bigot. But Putin is holding the world’s biggest party, and everyone wants to rock out with the host.

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Canada’s Sochi mission head, Steve Podborski, justifies our presence in Putin’s autocracy this way: “In Russia, it’s their country, they do what they want over there. If it’s something you don’t agree with, well then the Olympics is really not the place to do it. You’re going to the Olympics to compete in the Olympic Games.”

That’s more or less what the Chinese told Mr. Rosen when he visited seven years ago, just before the Beijing Summer Games in 2008. “The Games are a celebration of sports,” said the spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee, “not a political convention.”

But in autocratic countries, where the legitimacy of the government rests in large part on their ability to orchestrate grand, imperial-flavoured spectacles, the Olympics are very much political.

This is especially true of Russia, where the whole country has been nursing a spasm of wounded pride since the collapse of the Soviet empire. One might think the enormous crony-bloated US$51-billion cost of the Sochi games would comprise a fatal political scandal for Mr. Putin, as it would in any normal country.

But in the modern era, the staging of the Olympic Games has become the equivalent of a potlatch ceremony, by which chieftains blow away huge chunks of national wealth in an ostentatious show of power. As with the Chinese in 2008 (when Beijing gold-medalled its way to glory on the backs of an army of child drones, snatched from their parents in early childhood so they could labour away at pummel mount and water polo at state-run training centres), many Russians apparently think this to be a sensible use of the national treasury.

The last two weeks show the utter impossibility of separating the sports-competition aspect of the Olympics from the social and political context in which they take place. At many events in Sochi, Mr. Putin himself has had a place of honour, like a Roman emperor witnessing the jousting of gladiators. The combatants might not think of themselves as political creatures. But with every trident thrust, they’re bringing legitimacy to Caesar’s rule.

When the Games began two weeks ago, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach accused Western leaders of playing politics “on the backs of the athletes” — by which he meant politicians’ failure to come to Sochi to pay homage to the Olympic spirit in person.

Like every completely amoral functionary, he is appalled ethical considerations — such as protesting Russia’s retrograde position on gay rights, and its support of Bashar Al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria and Viktor Yanukovych’s in Ukraine — should trump ticket sales.

But, to be fair to Mr. Bach, remember Sochi was picked as the site for this year’s games way back in 2007 — when many of us still imagined Russia might be on some sort of halting limp toward genuine democracy. How was he, or anybody at the IOC, to know the country would backslide into homophobic klepto-Putinism? The dilatory nature of the current site-selection process guarantees we’ll occasionally be sending our athletes to Games organized by dictators.

The five applicant cities for the 2022 Winter Olympics include Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Lviv, Ukraine. Does anyone have the slightest idea what the political situation in those countries will be eight years from now — for gays, political dissenters, or anyone else?

One of the other applicant cities is Oslo, Norway. And without me knowing a single thing about the quality of Norway’s ski facilities, the occupancy-level of its hockey arenas, or the plushness of its hotels, I already can tell you (from my admittedly non-amoral perspective) this city would be the best choice — for the simple reason that eight years from now, we can say with 100% certainty, Norway will be a humane, stable and democratic country. Ukraine, not so much. Kazakhstan, not at all.

BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty ImagesA general view of Independence square is seen during the face off against heavily-armed police Feb. 20, 2014 in Kyiv.

You can see why the IOC honchos like the current system: Who wouldn’t want to spend their time gallivanting to Moscow and Beijing, being wined and dined by world leaders — with the fattest lobster tails and richest caviar being served up by those autocrats most desperate for the international legitimacy conferred by the five interlocking Olympic rings?

Plus, examine the list of IOC members. Do you think North Korea’s Ung Chang cares much about human rights violations in Russia, or anywhere else? Or how about Reynaldo Gonzalez Lopez of Cuba, Samih Moudallal of Syria or Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe?

Voting is done by secret ballot, with all sorts of figure-skating-judge-style opportunities for collusion and outright bribery — business as usual in Russian-style economies.

'The guy I spent ninety minutes with and the guy I watched make The Shootist was not the guy I'd read about in any of the books. Wasn't even close'Biographer Scott Eyman met John Wayne only once. It was 1972, Eyman was 21 and Wayne was shooting a television special. His new biography on John Wayne came about, Eyman explains by phone from his home in West Palm Beach, “basically because the guy I spent ninety minutes with and the guy I watched make <em>The Shootist</em> was not the guy I'd read about in any of the books. Wasn't even close.”
[caption id="attachment_144189" align="alignright" width="300"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-144189" src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/johnwayne3.jpg?w=300&quot; alt="Handout" width="300" height="452" /> Handout[/caption]
Five years and 672 pages later, in Eyman’s new biography <em>John Wayne: The Life and the Legend</em>, we learn that Wayne’s favourite place to sail his boat <em>Wild Goose</em> was a spot north of Vancouver, for the salmon fishing, that he could size up a woman’s catalogue dress size on sight, and other of what he calls important but “quotidian granular details” like that Wayne's signature scent was a mingle of Camel cigarettes, Neutrogena soap, Listerine. And a lot more besides.
“He was a rich character hiding in plain sight,” Eyman writes. “Deeply flawed, deeply moving, earthy and warm, a Scots-Irish brawler by blood and by temperament, full of love and rage and forgiveness.”
To get there, the acclaimed biographer (of Ernst Lubitsch and Louis B. Mayer, among other subjects) took the opposite approach of the cynical pronouncement in director John Ford’s western <em>The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance</em>: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
John Wayne died in 1979; if he were alive today, he’d be 106. There are very few of his cronies left to remember, firsthand, the facts about man known to friends and family as Marion “Duke” Morrison, a workaholic who had often declared he was “in the John Wayne business.”
Excavating the memories of the mid-century Hollywood figures who remain is never without a sense of urgency. “I’ve felt like the Grim Reaper for thirty years!” Eyman ruefully admits. “You never know what you might be able to use two or three books down the road. It’s not completely without a certain mercenary or selfish motive.”
For the chapter about <em>The Alamo</em>, the most important interview was Robert Relyea, the movie’s assistant director, who died a few months after their interview. “Bob had a successful producing career of his own — he produced<em> Bullitt</em> and <em>Le Mans </em>for Steve McQueen,” but at that stage he was just a young assistant director who’d worked with Willy Wyler and John Sturges and Robert Wise. “He was the perfect interview, because he had a great set of eyes. An assistant director (or for that matter, a cameraman), their ego does not precede them into the room, their job is to service the film and the director but they have to interact with everybody.”
<blockquote class="pullquote">Everybody likes the money in movies, and the fame and the bullsh-t, and the publicity. but very few people like the process. Wayne loved the process</blockquote>
Eyman also couldn’t have written about Wayne without standing on the shoulders of previous research for his two books on John Ford (published in 1999 and 2002).
“I went back to my notes and interviews and there was a fair amount of stuff I hadn’t used, of course — you talk about one, the other tends to come up in conversation. So I had interviews with people like Burt Kennedy, for instance, who was very tangential to John Ford’s career but did a lot with John Wayne and Budd Boetticher. I only talked to Boetticher about Ford re-editing <em>Bullfighter and the Lady</em>, but of course he did <em>Seven Men from Now</em> for Batjac.”
He also had full use of the archives of Batjac, Wayne’s production company, thanks to Gretschen Wayne – access to financials, correspondence, and never-before-read material that had sat neglected in a file cabinet for years.
In particular, there was a series of interviews and oral histories commissioned by Michael Wayne after his father’s death in 1979. “They’re just transcripts — there’s no indication as to who is actually doing the interviews or what the questions were. They’re simply single-spaced, three pages or eight pages whatever they may be.” Some oral histories came from people in Wayne’s orbit many hadn’t known existed there, like Ben DeLoach. “He was one of the singers in the premiere at Watsek became a professor of voice at Yale,” Eyman explains “He was working with John Wayne on a USO tour in 1943 and reconnected with him later. The fact that DeLoach — basically an East Coast opera intellectual — had bonded with Wayne to the extent he could go to California and look him up and they’d go out socially told me in and of itself a great deal.”
[caption id="attachment_144188" align="alignleft" width="300"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-144188" src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/johnwayne2.jpg?w=300&quot; alt="Handout" width="300" height="646" /> Handout[/caption]
Other exclusives come from the many hours Eyman also spent (while in his 20s) talking to cinematographer William Clothier, who died in 1996 (he shot <em>Liberty Valance</em>, among other major westerns) and knew Wayne well before the John Ford years. “He was a guy who came up the ladder slowly,” Eyman said; “He worked on William Wellman’s <em>Wings</em> as an assistant cameraman in 1927, so he’d been around the business forever!” Eyman had interviews with him, alongside material from Wayne collaborators, like stuntman Dean Smith.
Friend (and TCM host) Robert Osborne introduced him to actor Robert Horton, now 89, who worked with Wayne on <em>Wagon Train, </em>important for understanding the larger political narrative of the era. “He gave me such insight into Ward Bond — because I couldn’t quite grasp him, how a very good character actor with no particular leverage in the Hollywood studio system suddenly became the arbiter of who worked and who didn’t, in terms of the Blacklist. How did that happen? How did he get to clear people of being a Communist? What is John Ford doing with this guy?” (The subject is still touchy today; Horton asked for a weekend to decide whether he even wanted to talk about the era.)
Eyman explores another aspect of Wayne: the journeyman film man. “By which I mean everybody likes the money in movies, and the fame and the bullsh-t, and the publicity. but very few people like the <em>process</em>,” Eyman says. “You act for 30 seconds and then sit there for half an hour. The process is so attenuated, it’s very hard to maintain any psychological focus. Wayne <em>loved</em> that process."
In the end, the book delivers the dual biography promised in the subtitle. “He was the guy on the screen but he was also someone else - this other guy, Duke Morrison," Eyman says, "who was co-existing with John Wayne for fifty years, who was never entirely absent and never left the room. Nobody has written about <em>him</em>."
<em>John Wayne: THe Life and the LEgend is out now; Eyman is co-hosting John Wayne presentations on TCM throughout April and John Wayne: The Epic Collection, a 40-DVD from Warner Home Video, comes out May 20.</em>

It’s the United Nations, in other words, with a soccer pitch and a bobsled track. But surely throwing the bums out of the IOC and reforming it root-and-branch would be easier than remaking Turtle Bay.

And the first reform I’d put in place would be an open and transparent site-selection process that includes a prospective host nation’s democratic status and rule-of-law bona fides — as measured by Freedom House and Transparency International — as the most important selection criteria.

In a 1981 book about Soviet propaganda techniques (cited by Rosen), Paul Hollander noted “even if the visitor [to Russia or one of its client states] harbours any abstract or generalized notions about the possibilities of social injustice … the visible, tangible realities he comes in contact with powerfully counteract his apprehensions.”

This is more or less what has happened in Sochi, where the moral sensibilities of selfie-snapping visitors have been forgotten among the glitter of medals. When the time comes every two years to determine who is Faster, Higher, Stronger, Caesar should be out of the frame, and out of the building.

A Ukrainian skier has withdrawn from the Olympics in response to the deaths of anti-government protesters in her country.

“I don’t want to participate when in my country people die,” Bogdana Matsotska told the Associated Press on Thursday.

The 24-year-old skier is refusing to ski Friday in the slalom, which is her third and best event at the Sochi Olympics. She finished second in the event at the national championships last August.

Matsotska wants to leave the Olympics immediately to join protesters in the camp known as Maidan in Kyiv’s Independence Square, but said she has been unable to book a flight home.

“I am in Maidan but just with my soul,” she said.

The two-time Olympian explained her frustration with Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych in an interview conducted in English and Russian.

“I think as a minimum he has to be jailed and for a long time, for all the lives that he took, for all the lives of innocent people that came peacefully to stand for their opinion,” Matsotska said.

“I hope that I will be heard by the world and that probably somebody will step in and will help,” she said.

Matsotska is remaining with Oleg Matsotskyy, her father and coach, in the athletes village in the mountains above Sochi.

FACEBOOKBogdana Matsotska and her father and coach Oleg Matsotskyy hoist the Ukraine flag in the Olympic village.

“We made this decision together. It is really hard for a sportsman and coach,” she said. “The people are dying and my friends and family are there and I cannot race after all this in Ukraine going on.”

Matsotskyy posted a message in Ukrainian on his Facebook page in which he assailed Yanukovych’s latest actions.

“Instead of resolving the conflict through negotiations (which we had hoped he would when we left for Sochi), he has drenched the last hopes of the nation in blood,” the message read.

Matsotska was alerted to the fresh escalation of violence in Kyiv by friends on Tuesday, hours after she raced to a 43rd place finish in the giant slalom. She finished 27th in super-G last Saturday.

FACEBOOKBogdana Matsotska says she and her father, Oleg Matsotskyy, decided together she could not race in the Olympics Friday afte the deaths in Ukraine.

She said she could not sleep Tuesday night while worrying about friends and watching footage from Kyiv online.

“As every person (in Maidan), I am afraid for my life but I hope I will never, ever be sorry about this decision,” said Matsotska, who wore Ukraine Olympic team clothing in national colors of yellow and pale blue.

Pole vaulting great Sergei Bubka, who is the head of Ukraine’s national Olympic committee, told the AP on Thursday that he met with all the Ukrainian athletes still at the games and they plan to stay in Russia and return home as a team on Monday.

AP Photo / Mark CarlsonUkrainian pole vault great Sergei Bubka is interviewed outside the headquarters hotel of the International Olympic Committee, at the 2014 Winter Olympics, in Sochi Russia on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014. Bubka appealed Wednesday to both sides in his homeland's political crisis to halt the violence that has claimed dozens of lives and brought the country "to the brink of catastrophe."

“It’s not easy,” Bubka said. “We are trying to show to the world that Ukrainian athletes are competing. We try to show the glory for Ukraine.”

Sarah Lewis, the secretary general of the International Ski Federation, told the AP that Matsotska’s decision was a matter for the Ukrainian NOC to address while the federation focused on the games.

“Clearly the scenes from Ukraine are shocking for us all, and clearly it has a big effect on the athletes,” Lewis said. “Judging from it, it’s more important to her than Olympic participation. It’s a personal decision that she’s taken, that she feels is her way of dealing with the matter. But we’ll focus on getting the competition done.”

Olympic downhill medallist Edi Podivinsky was skiing with his family on Sunday when he received a phone call from his distraught father.

Podivinsky’s phone had already been ringing constantly after Canadian Jan Hudec won a bronze medal in super-G at the Sochi Olympics earlier that day.

Hudec had become the first Canadian to win an Olympic medal in any alpine event since Podivinsky’s bronze medal in men’s downhill at the 1994 Lilliehammer Games, and reporters had been calling for his take.

But this call was not from a reporter. Instead his father told him his older brother Thomas (Tom) Podivinsky had died in a ski accident at a Montana ski resort on Sunday afternoon.

HandoutEdi Podivinsky was five years younger and as a boy would copy his “exceptional” older brother, Thomas.
As a teenager Edi Podivinsky traded in his hockey skates for skis because his older brother participated in the sport.

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Tom Podivinsky, 48, was on vacation with his wife and children when the accident occurred.

The Calgary oil executive died after falling into a tree well at Whitefish Mountain Resort, according to the Flathead County sheriff’s office.

Podivinsky was skiing with a friend when they became separated around 12:30 p.m. Sunday. When he failed to meet up with a group of people as planned, he was reported missing.

Ski patrollers found Podivinsky upside down in a tree well — a hole in the snow that forms around the base of a tree — and were unable to resuscitate him.

Gerry Kahrmann / Postmedia NewsFormer Canadian national skier Edi Podivinsky is shown stretching in the morning sun during his training days.

Podivinsky is the second man to die in a tree well at the resort this year and a statement issued Monday from Whitefish Mountain Resort encouraged guests to take extra caution when skiing in the trees.

“We are deeply saddened by this tragedy,” the statement said.

“This accident is another unfortunate reminder that tree wells are an inherent risk of the sport.”

Edi Podivinsky said Monday his brother was a popular individual.

“He had an ability to find fun in every situation,” he said.

“He brought out the good in everybody and he had a lot of friends.”

Edi Podivinsky was five years younger and as a boy would copy his “exceptional” older brother.

As a teenager Edi Podivinsky traded in his hockey skates for ski poles because his older brother participated in the sport.

“I was torn between hockey and skiing when I was 13,” Edi Podivinsky told the Calgary Herald in 1994. “But I followed in my brother’s footsteps.”

Podivinsky had worked for the Athabasca Oil Corporation as a chief geophysicist since 2007.

“Tom was a thorough professional and was always upbeat and eager to share his knowledge with others. He will be sorely missed by his friends and colleagues,” said a statement from Athabasca.

As an alumni of the Alberta Alpine ski race team, Podivinsky rubbed shoulders with many of Canada’s top skiers.

He didn’t go on as far as Edi did, but he was capable of skiing anything, anywhere

He was a regular participant in the Bozo Cup ProAm, an annual head to head ski race series in Banff attended by an impressive roster of athletes, including Hudec.

Candace Webber — who produced the Bozo Cup for years and came to know Podivinsky as a friend — said Podivinsky was “always happy, always smiling”.

Webber said while his brother may have been more famous, Tom Podivinsky was a superb athlete and well-known in Alberta’s ski community.

“He didn’t go on as far as Edi did, but he was capable of skiing anything, anywhere,” Webber said.

“It (the accident) was just one of those sad things where he obviously just got too close to the tree well and it collapsed. The only upside, if there is any, is that he was doing what he absolutely loved doing.”

For 56 years, Vicky Fitzgerald kept the weighty “coin,” no bigger than a silver dollar, tucked away in a locked box. She knew that piece of bronze was special, she just didn’t know how special.

In the thick of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the mystery has been solved: It’s a rare participant’s medal from the first ever modern Olympic games held in Athens, Greece. It’s a piece of Olympic history.

And now the Nova Scotia grandmother of four needs to make a tough call — does she keep the medal as the precious family heirloom she’s always considered it to be? Or does she donate it to the United States Olympic Committee, which is urging her to add it to their archive collection?

“It’s overwhelming,” Mrs. Fitzgerald told the National Post from her home in Yarmouth County, N.S., on Monday.

“Everybody’s giving me advice.”

Mrs. Fitzgerald was only seven years-old when she found the medal — always called a “coin” in her family — in a pair of pants that had been sent in a care package from her great aunt Lillian in Wakefield, Mass. Her parents offered to return it, but the aunt said she knew nothing about it and that Mrs. Fitzgerald ought to have it — finder’s keepers.

The Fitzgeralds were always pretty sure the medal was connected with the Olympics — the second Greek word etched into the bronze made that fairly clear.

“We were never 100% sure,” she said. “But I am now.”

After reaching out to a local reporter, Mrs. Fitzgerald and her family eventually learned of its significance — and how sought after it would be.

Sarah FitzgeraldVicky Fitzgerald, bottom left, when she was a child, with her father's mother and one of her brothers and sisters.

The medal bears the date of 1906, which fell between the 1904 games in St. Louis and the 1908 games in London. The hardware actually dates back to the summer of 1896, but was a leftover participants’ medal forwarded on to the 1906 games, which were never officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee.

Vicky Fitzgerald familyVicky Fitzgerald when she was about 14-years-old.

The U.S.’s Olympic Committee archivist Teresa Hedgpeth told CTV that “is an oversight that needs to be corrected.” The donation of the medal would “be one step in that direction.”

“If Vicki donated the medal to us, it would become the Vicky Fitzgerald Collection in the USOC Archives,” she told CTV Atlantic’s Jayson Baxter, adding that they don’t have a similar medal in their archives.

There have been family meetings about the medal, still locked in a box. A private collector has offered Mrs. Fitzgerald US$1,100.

“We’ve all spoken about it — if you give it to one of the grandsons, which range in age from 14-9, maybe one of them will get jealous,” said her daughter, Sara Fitzgerald.

“It was never my intention to be rid of the medal or to sell it or to give it away to anybody,” she said.

She remembers her father coming over to her house next door before he died 14 years ago and teasing her, saying, “Vicky, do you still have that coin from Greece? I bet you don’t know where it is.” But Mrs. Fitzgerald quickly produced it and placed it in his hand.

“He said, ‘Vicky, mom and I are not going to know what this is before we die, but you will before you die.’

It’s impossible not to marvel at the spectacle and camaraderie of the Olympics — to be awestruck by athletes who have devoted their lives with monomaniacal intensity to perfecting a sport.

NP GraphicsClick to Enlarge

Yet behind the dramas and heartbreak that catch the world’s attention, few wonder how the games are run and funded.

That’s just the way the International Olympic Committee (IOC) likes it. The exclusive and secretive organization is a cozy old boys’ club (with a few women) critics compare to the Italian mafia.

Although governments contribute cash to the Olympics, the IOC is private. It receives billions in revenue that critics say are not subject to enough scrutiny.

“Because it’s a private organization — they are not funded by the government or by the public — they don’t have any obligation to give information or be transparent,” said Jean-Loup Chappelet, a professor at the graduate school of public administration at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and one of the few academics to study the IOC’s governance.

Several members have been embroiled in match fixing or vote buying scandals, while others have uncomfortable ties to sponsors and broadcasters who have struck lucrative deals with the games. Some, essentially, inherited their roles, such as Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., executive committee member and son of the long-time former president.

The IOC has a say in every aspect of the Games. It oversees national Olympic committees, negotiates broadcast and sponsorship rights, and decides what sports can compete. Most crucially, it picks the sites.

FileThe brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin, the modern Games were first held in Athens in 1896 as an attempt to recreate the competitions of ancient Greece.

And although IOC representatives are unpaid, their position alone guarantees extraordinary influence. They also enjoy such perks as free travel and event tickets.

The group’s image as a secretive coalition with a culture of kickbacks and corruption made headlines during the Salt Lake City scandal in 1998.

Although the IOC has attempted real reform since then, critics say it is not as fair-minded as its Olympic ideals and far from being democratic. Until it imposes strict term limits on members and opens its nomination process, a secretive few will continue to control the world’s largest celebration of sport.

The Olympics were once much more innocent. The brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin, the modern Games were first held in Athens in 1896 as an attempt to recreate the competitions of ancient Greece.

DAVID GOLDMAN/AFP/Getty ImagesRussian President Vladimir Putin, centre, toasts International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, left, after the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics on Feb. 7, 2014, in Sochi.

Since then, they have evolved into a staggering and lucrative spectacle. Under the aegis of the IOC, national bodies and international sports federations oversee the development and qualification of athletes. An organizing committee is struck to manage each Games.

Although the 104 members are elected, they must first pass the scrutiny of the IOC executive. The result is a culture that is “closed and conservative. It’s like a club,” said Prof. Chappelet.

“There’s almost no accountability or transparency. It’s a secretive voting process. Who knows what goes on behind the scenes?” added Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, a retired professor at the University of Toronto and author of several books on the Olympics.

One of the most contentious issues is the IOC’s choice of undemocratic states that have little regard for human rights, such as China and Russia.

The IOC insists it is politically neutral, with President Thomas Bach calling U.S. President Barack Obama’s refusal to go to Sochi an “ostentatious gesture.”

JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty ImagesInternational Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach speaks during the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics at the Fisht Olympic Stadium on Feb. 7, 2014 in Sochi.

“We are grateful to those who respect the fact that sport can only contribute to the development of peace if it’s not used as a stage for political dissent, or for trying to score points in internal or external contexts,” Mr. Bach said.

Getty ImagesAdolf Hitler and his staff salute the teams during the opening ceremonies of the XI Olympic Games on Aug. 1, 1936 in Berlin, Germany.

But staging an Olympics pays big dividends for host nations. The show-stopping spectacles in Sochi and Beijing distract the world from the opaque and dictatorial political systems underpinning them.

The most prominent example is, of course, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, a triumph of pre-war Nazi propaganda.

The fascist connections don’t stop there: Juan Antonio Samaranch Sr., IOC president for 21 years, was a sports minister under Spanish military dictator Francisco Franco.

Andrew Jennings, a British investigative journalist who has written several books on the IOC, has even found photographs of Mr. Samaranch delivering “Heil Hitler” salutes.

“Nobody ever says the ‘f-word’ when writing about the Olympics,” he said.

Getty ImagesThe Olympic torch is carried into the stadium during the opening ceremonies of the XI Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany, on Aug. 1, 1936.

“The problem with the IOC is that it’s covered by sports reporters who are too craven and cowardly … [IOC members] are a bunch of very dubious people seizing on ordinary people who have a passion for sport.”

PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/Getty ImagesDick Pound, a former Olympian and Canada’s only IOC member.

That passion does not seem to be abating.

Sochi’s $51-billion price tag is the most spent on any Olympics. Prof. Chappelet said the number of cities rich enough to afford the Games continues to shrink. A serious bid now costs $50-million to $100-million, much of it spent on lobbying.

This gives non-democratic regimes an advantage: They can spend enormous amounts of money without having to worry about accountability.

“It’s not politically acceptable, but it has been said that it’s easier to organize an Olympics in non-democratic countries where people don’t have a say,” he said.

But Dick Pound, a former Olympian and Canada’s only IOC member, says selectors shouldn’t discriminate against such states.

“The fact that the style of government is not one that mirrors Canada doesn’t mean [such a] country is any less worthy or less able to organize the games,” he said from Sochi.

“There’s an evolution in economics and politics … The Russia of today is not the Soviet Union of 30 years ago. Brazil is not the country it was 30 years ago.

“I think you have to be ready to move your event around the world, and not try to stereotype the kinds of governments and political organizations that are ‘worthy’ of hosting the games.”

One thing that is not in doubt is the values of the Games to the IOC.

In 2009-12, the Olympics earned more than US$8-billion, mostly from broadcasting rights and sponsorships. Of that, 90% is distributed to national and organizing committees.

The IOC goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure the exclusivity and value of its corporate sponsorships. This year, for example, it ordered the hiding of car grills and covered up the Apple logos on media laptops with duct tape.

The competition among cities can be every bit as ruthless, as became clear during the Salt Lake City scandal.

Despite having technically superior bids, the Utah capital lost out several times. The 1998 Winter Olympics went to Nagano, after Japanese officials spent exorbitant sums entertaining IOC officials.

The IOC expelled six members. It also implemented numerous reforms, including opening its financial statements and annual general meetings. IOC members were also barred from visiting potential bid cities.

Mr. Pound believes these reforms had a major impact.

“[The IOC] may have been [secretive] at one point, but we’re one of the few international organizations that opens up its meetings to the media and publishes audited financial statements,” he said.

“In terms of governance principles that we now apply, we demonstrate best practices.”

Prof. Chappelet, on the other hand, thinks the IOC could do more to keep up with evolving standards. While the post-Salt Lake reforms were positive, they are now more than a decade old.

And the IOC has done little to continue improving in the meantime. Prof. Chappelet said even FIFA, the international body that governs soccer, has better ethics expectations than the IOC now.

“I think the public requests more now than it did in 1999 in terms of transparency,” he said. “The signposts have moved.”

Others wonder whether anything has really changed.

Ms. Lenskyj calls the post-Salt Lake improvements “superficial,” while in 2004, a BBC probe found several well-connected people willing to help London to secure IOC votes for the 2012 bid — for enough cash. Several recent books include statements from IOC members boasting about quid pro quo agreements, Ms. Lenskyj said.

Raking in more than US$3-billion in 2012, the International Olympic Committee distributes its largesse through a bewildering number of outlets, with the bulk of the money going to national Olympic committees. And though broadcasting brings in the lion’s share of revenue, broadcasting costs have also soared, making up an increasingly large part of spending.

Figure skating. Dog don’t know. Dog likes all fancy shirts made of bright sparkly things (who don’t like?) and dog get excited when people throw onto ice stuffed toy animals (who don’t like!) but otherwise mens and womens act kind of silly pretending to be birds (why not pretend to be dog?) with arms all up in air and spinning and smiling like Mommy Jessica after taking handful of funny pills. Also WHAT IS UP WITH SO TIGHT PANTS? Master and Mommy once put pants on dog but dog was humiliated and ate favourite Mommy pillow that someone named Auntie Rosiland stitched in some place named Cape Cod. Still, in dog’s mind dog think stuffed toys be nice reward, which mens and womens don’t get in other sports. Instead, they get cups, which, you know, is maybe good to drink from or pee in depending what you need to do.

WHERE IS LUGE GO? Dog don’t understand. Luge disappears and when it reappear dog don’t know

Luge, what is this? This is confusing for dog because whoosh there is luge and then whoosh luge disappears. WHERE IS LUGE GO? Dog don’t understand. Luge disappears and when it reappear dog don’t know: is race starting again? Luge goes and goes and goes and then mens and womens stop luges (lugii?) with feet. Mens and womens get out of sled, which is really what a luge is — a sled — like the kind Mommy Jessica took little Brad on when Brad was just tiny baby and dog go too with them but now Brad is grown up and has “money problems” and other stupid things that happened after start of “alternative shoeware business,” which is what Brad did. Brad was nice baby but he stressed out as man. Maybe he be happy if he luged, but dog don’t know. Brad looks at dog like dog some kind of idiot, which is fine. Brad is idiot too. Sometimes, dog lick own balls to make him feel inadequate.

There is celebrating with giant glasses of beer. Dog think human civilization is possibly in deep trouble

OK, curling. OMG. Dogs feel like going somewhere to die while game is happening. Curling is game where mens and womens throw big round rocks and what is worse mens and womens scream and scream like getting needle in eye even though rock is going not fast but SO SO SO SO SO SLOW. This confuses dog (and confuses cat, too, even though cat won’t show it). This confuses dog because just when you think you know about mens and womens and how they love watching trucks crashing and buildings getting blown up and the Fast and the Furious and UFC and shooting gun movies, they sit down with bag of candies and watch a game where big round rock goes down floor and then — get this — it stops. Also, there is celebrating with giant glasses of beer. Dog think human civilization is possibly in deep trouble.

Biathlon, I kind of like. I kind of like because it be like hunting

Then there comes speed skating. Again, not speedy. Mens and womens go round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and by the end of their circles mens and womens lie down crying and sobbing and reaching for coaches arm but dog can’t understand why they so tired (it not being because they were going fast!) Dog would like to see speed skater chase bus down road at night and then see how tired they are. Dog thinks skaters maybe working “in the realm of investments,” which is why they seem so tired from going round. It’s what Master Tim (Brad’s daddy) says all the time right before he goes to sleep on couch. He also says, “Goddamned clients up my ass all day,” which dog don’t understand. Still: speed skating. Dog feels like going somewhere to die when this is on, too.

Related

Biathlon, I kind of like. I kind of like because it be like hunting, which Master Tim tried once, but he got drunk in shack with buddies Bluto and Studs and never woke up to shoot birds (something I wanted to do a lot!). Still, it was good time (Bluto gave me his old french fries!) and I got to run around in woods sniffing for poops and bums and all fun things not found in suburbs, which is where Master lives. On way home in Audi, Master says to dog lying on passenger seat: “Sometimes a fella’s got to get in touch with his primal self, eh buddy?” (Dog hates being called “buddy.”) I ruffed at him YES! — this always gets him to shut up — but because mens never shoot gun how he can get in touch with primal self, dog don’t know. Dog don’t know too many things. But what dog knows is this. Olympics is weird and men and women ridiculous. Olympics is on TV all the time and then Olympics are gone. This is all dog is thinking now.

When an Olympic ring failed to open at the Sochi opening ceremonies, the punchline was unavoidable.

Vladimir Putin is going to kill someone.

It was a comically exaggerated reaction, of course, but revealing. Unlike in Vancouver, where a malfunctioning arm in the opening ceremonies was good-naturedly referenced in the closing, symbolic failure in Russia is a dangerous thing.

ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty ImagesThe Olympic rings are presented during the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics at the Fisht Olympic Stadium on February 7, 2014 in Sochi.

Sochi 2014, the first Russian Olympics since the widely boycotted 1980 Summer Games in Soviet Moscow, is invested with unusual import for the fate of modern Russia and of Mr. Putin, its fierce and steadfast champion.

NP Graphics

Riding a high of foreign policy successes, in which he has solidified his role as the “spoiler” of Western interventionism from Syria to Iran, these Games are Mr. Putin’s victory party, a tribute to the soft power he covets. As a result, they are a great vulnerability.

“We missed something important during the last three or four years. We missed that Russia is changing dramatically,” said Piotr Dutkiewicz, director of the Centre for Governance and Public Management at Carleton University in Ottawa. As the West fretted over economic crises, Russia became more confident and assertive, he said, and when Mr. Putin reclaimed the presidency in 2012, it “was not the same Putin who left office in 2008.” He is “stronger than ever,” and in his mind, Sochi is evidence that the Russians “are back, big time.”

As Russia’s main political force in the last decade and a half, this is all Mr. Putin’s doing and thanks to a string of minor victories, he appears to be re-emerging as a central figure in world affairs, according to Aurel Braun, a Canadian visiting professor of international relations at Harvard University.

For example, he saved Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, the devil-eared gasser of innocents, from an allied assault, weakening U.S. President Barack Obama in the process. He has thus far managed to block harsher nuclear sanctions on Iran, a conflict for which the West does not seem to have much appetite.

He bullied Ukraine into changing course and not joining the European Union’s Eastern Partnership, such that it is now considering joining the Eurasian customs union, in which Russia is the hegemonic power.

Mr. Putin, the famously cocksure sportsman, who dives into the Black Sea and comes up with ancient ceramics, has also lately emerged as a ladykiller, dating Alina Kabayeva, a much younger gymnast, while separating from Lyudmila, his wife of 30 years.

He is a man of great accomplishment who still has something to prove. Sochi is a little red sports car. The match makes itself, but it is a risky one.

“He’s made his bed, now he’s lying in it, and I think he’s going to find it rather uncomfortable,” said Neil MacFarlane, the Lester B. Pearson professor of international relations at the University of Oxford.

For Mr. Putin, the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of modern history and he has devoted himself to the resurrection and revival of Russia as a great power, an equal to the mighty U.S., Mr. MacFarlane said.

“They lost that in the Soviet collapse, and then in the Russian collapse, and he has been trying to get back on the pedestal,” Mr. MacFarlane said. As a result, he takes the Olympics more personally than David Cameron took London 2012, or Stephen Harper took Vancouver 2010, or even than Hu Jintao took Beijing 2008. National insecurity is built into the very project. “That is why they have to go right,” Mr. MacFarlane said.

It all contributes to the image of the bedraggled Russian bear emerging into the spring of Mr. Putin’s middle age, all hungry and horny, driven by instinct to reclaim its youthful vigour, or die trying.

The problem, Mr. Braun said, is that, economically speaking, Russia, with the per capita GDP of Barbados, is basically Italy. It could be Japan or maybe even Germany, but it wants to be the Soviet Union and that is not going to happen, not the way the Russian Federation is now.

“They’ll never be a superpower. They can’t, they don’t have the population, they don’t have the innovation,” said Mr. Braun.

NP Graphics

“Russia could be a very successful, advanced, industrialized state of about 140-million people. But Putin doesn’t see that. He bought into the imperial ambitions that when he came to power he was dismissive of. So he began to be seduced by power… He has bought into the fantasy.”

People talk about Olympics as benefitting the host. But Greece after Athens, for example, was all bankruptcy and riots. “That’s what’s going to happen to Russia,” said Mr. Braun. “It will be Greece on the Black Sea.”

Never mind China, the rising dragon. Forget Seoul, whose Olympics heralded South Korean ascendance. On this analysis, Russia is lucky to compete with Brazil, whose Rio 2016 Olympics are already, no doubt unfairly, expected to be a shambles.

These kind of comparisons hit proud Russians especially hard, given the glories of their history. The media’s preliminary focus on the negative — the shabby accommodation, the stray dogs, the anti-gay propaganda law — has “incensed” Russia’s governing class, according to Juliet Johnson, professor of political science at McGill University in Montreal.

The Games “have very much become Vladimir Putin’s personal project, and as such he has staked his international reputation on delivering an impressive, safe Olympic games that showcase Russian athletes and Russian culture,” she said.

Safety is a key concern, given the terrorist threats all around.

“What he’s done is too create a very tempting target for people in the North Caucasus who don’t like him,” said Mr. MacFarlane, an expert on the Caucasus who studied in the USSR during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev.

Doku Umarov is a prime example, the Chechen Islamist leader and so-called Emir of the Caucasus, who has been knocked around for years by Mr. Putin. For him, “sticking something in Putin’s eye would be great.”

The Economist this week has a hilariously tragic cover, with Mr. Putin as a figure skater who has just dropped his partner — his country — but still preens for the crowd, toes pointed and arms aloft.

It is sharp mockery, but the risk he faces is not just embarrassment. It is not only the logistical complaints, nor inadequate accommodation, nor even the side-by-side toilets that set Twitter a-titter. Every Olympics has a round of stories like that. Nor is it even the threat of an awkward international incident over gay rights.

The real risk is deeper, reputational, and as such the Games are a rare vulnerability for Mr. Putin. Major failure of any sort — terrorism, cancellations, or an athlete’s death — would hit him where it hurts, in his posture as the world’s magnanimous host.

Not for nothing did he free Pussy Riot, the Greenpeace protestors, and Mikhail Khodorkhovsky — those small gestures of goodwill over Christmas that were meant to conceal years of gross repression.

Even terrorism, though, is not the main threat to Mr. Putin, given the sympathetic global reaction that would surely follow. The real vulnerability to Mr. Putin is the bill, which his country can ill afford.

“The one that’s really going to get him, I bet, is he says the Olympics cost $14-billion. Others say it cost $51-billion. So where is the $37-billion? I can surmise that a lot of it has been stolen. By whom? People with access. Friends of Putin,” said Mr. MacFarlane. “That’s not going to go well.”

For Russia, hosting Sochi — a Winter Games in a subtropical climate — is like going to Las Vegas on credit. It is “one exorbitant, costly, unaffordable Putin party that, no matter how good it will look at the time, will leave a terrible economic and political smell afterwards for which Russia is ill-equipped to pay,” said Mr. Braun.

The EconomistThe Economist cover this week has a hilariously tragic cover, with President Vladimir Putin as a figure skater who has just dropped his partner — his country — but still preens for the crowd.

Russia cannot afford $50-billion, even if that is the real figure.

“In Russia, of course, nothing is what it seems,” said Mr. Braun. “We don’t realize what a pathetic remnant Russia is, and how a lot of this is smoke and mirrors… Sochi’s basically a fantasy. It is a fantasy of a Russia that is a superpower. It is a fantasy of a Russia that is a technologically advanced state.”

The reality, he said, is a third world country whose dictator is a victim of his own personality cult. When it intrudes on scenarios like that, reality can be devastating.

“The Olympics might be the trigger for that tipping point where he starts to go down. Then the question is: What does he do then?” Mr. MacFarlane said.

With Mr. Putin’s track record, that question is as dangerous as any broken ring.

The Winter Olympics in Sochi are hosting 88 nations, sent out in Russian alphabetical order.

Who wore national pride best?

The first group out is Greece, dressed like summer athletes in Adriatic turquoise track suits, followed by Azerbaijan, in the shapeless red parka my dad wears to shovel (ditto Switzerland and Argentina, in charcoal). So far, so good. Isabella Blow must have been the patron saint of whoever designed the outfits for the snow queens leading each athletic contingent with signage: the white military dresses have slit pencil skirts that show a major flash of leg with every step. Their bodies are encircled with frosted plastic double-rings, as though the comic-book version of gamma rays wrapping a villain. The crowning glory? Each outfit is topped with an enormous peaked golden filigree headpiece.

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesThe Switzerland Olympic team enjoys the atmosphere during the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Fisht Olympic Stadium on February 7, 2014 in Sochi, Russia.

A Vancouver man who had nearly 27,000 images of child pornography on his computer and who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy has been sentenced to three years, three months in jail<strong>By Keith Fraser</strong>
VANCOUVER — A Vancouver man who had nearly 27,000 images of child pornography on his computer and who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy has been sentenced to three years, three months in jail.
In December, Warren Robert Allen, 53, pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child porn for the purpose of distribution and one count of sexual assault.
Allen was arrested in May 2010 during a police crackdown on child pornography that resulted in more than 200 charges being laid and 57 arrests in Canada and overseas.
When police executed a search warrant on Allen’s Vancouver apartment, they found 840,000 images on his computer.
A review of just 200,000 of those images revealed 27,000 images of children under the age of five being sexually abused.
The vast majority of the child porn images were at the “extreme” end of child pornography, the court heard.
Allen shared his collection of child porn with others on the Internet but blamed his crime on the disinhibiting effects of crystal methamphetamines.
The sexual assault victim, who can only be identified by the initials K.R. due to a publication ban, was discovered after police conducted an analysis of the computer and found that Allen had chatted with the boy and lured him to his apartment.
Allen, who is HIV-positive, arranged to have an HIV-positive male friend pick up the boy and bring him to Allen’s West End apartment, where the two men sexually assaulted the youth in September 2009.
Later, Allen bragged about the “tag-team” sexual assault on a chat line.
In imposing sentence on him Friday, B.C. Supreme Court Madam Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein said Allen targeted a “troubled, susceptible” boy and said his conduct was “highly reprehensible and his moral blameworthiness was high.”
The mitigating factors in the case included that Allen has no prior criminal record and is a “very intelligent, high-functioning and high-achieving” man, said the judge.
She noted that Allen served as an RCMP officer in Alberta from 1978 to 1984, before leaving to get his law degree from Queen’s University.
The judge said that the sentencing principles of denunciation and deterrent were paramount but added she couldn’t overlook Allen’s prospects for rehabilitation.
Allen was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the sexual assault and two years jail for the child pornography offence, to be served consecutively.
He got three months reduced from his sentence due to pre-sentence custody, giving him a sentence of three years, three months.
The Crown had called for a sentence of seven to 10 years in jail with the defence arguing for two to 2 1/2 years in prison.
<em>Postmedia News</em>

KNIT WITS

It wouldn’t be winter without Nordic and traditional knits, like Andorra’s stylized snowflake intarsia sweaters, or Belarus’ fire engine red and white toques and knits. Serbia’s fringed scarves have the Olympic rings and a coat of arms knotted up front (bib meets cravat); Slovakia’s intarsia hearts and swirls adorned toques and scarves; Mongolia’s intarsia, in aqua blue on navy, is more 21st century stylized.

It was April 2000, the height of Robert “Willie” Pickton’s killing spree. Dozens of women were already missing, and 23 more would vanish. Pickton was by then a prime police suspect[caption id="attachment_132185" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Reuters"]<img class="size-full wp-image-132185" title="These undated photos show 9 of the 26 women Robert Pickton is suspected of murdering. Police involved in the investigations will testify next week, at the inquiry in B.C." src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/untitled-115.jpg&quot; alt="" width="300" height="390" />[/caption]
VANCOUVER • It was April 2000, the height of Robert “Willie” Pickton’s killing spree. Dozens of women were already missing, and 23 more would vanish. The Port Coquitlam pig farmer was trolling for skid row prostitutes, driving them to his farm, murdering them, disposing of their bodies and going back for more. He would continue this horrible pattern for at least another year, and right under the noses of police.
Pickton was by then a prime police suspect. Documents disclosed recently at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry in Vancouver offer stunning details of what police knew — or thought they knew — and what some officers didn’t seem to want to know.
Major crimes investigators were already aware, for example, that Pickton had a predilection for prostitutes. They knew of his episodic, sadistic violence. They had sources who claimed he was murdering women and chopping them to pieces. And yet investigations launched by both RCMP and the Vancouver Police Department seemed low priorities, the inquiry has heard. Little effort was made to co-ordinate efforts. Promising leads were discounted or dismissed altogether.
Perhaps most telling, on April 25, 2000, RCMP officers were already discussing the possibility that bungled police efforts would lead to a public inquiry.
On that date, a staff sergeant named Brad Zalys had a conversation with a superior officer, RCMP Inspector Earl Moulton. Staff Sgt. Zalys made the following observation in his notebook: “Also discussed Pickton again-->if he turns out to be responsible-->inquiry!-->Deal with that if the time comes!”
[np-related]
What led Staff Sgt. Zalys, Inspector Moulton, and others to such a state? What did they know? Why hadn’t Pickton been stopped by then? And why did B.C.’s criminal justice branch decide, in 1998, to stay proceedings against the loathsome pig farmer, after he’d been charged with attempting to murder a prostitute on his pig farm?
The present inquiry, led by former B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal, has a mandate to find out all of that, and to recommend changes to the way police homicide investigations are conducted.
[caption id="attachment_112669" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="AFP/Getty Images"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-112669" title="This undated BCTV grab shows Canadian pig farmer Robert William Pickton, charged with first-degree murder in the case of 50 women missing from Vancouver's downtown east side." src="http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/files-canada-murder-trial-p.jpeg?w=300&quot; alt="" width="300" height="225" />[/caption]
Proceedings have moved at a snail’s pace since hearings began in downtown Vancouver last fall, frustrating everyone involved, including Mr. Oppal. None of the officers who actually investigated Pickton have testified. That’s about to change. Next week, the inquiry will start hearing from as many as 33 police officers involved in the Pickton investigations.
One of them is Coquitlam RCMP Staff Sgt. Mike Connor, who likely knew more than any other officer about Pickton from 1997 to 2002, the crucial five years under review.
Staff Sgt. Connor, then a corporal, was assigned to investigate Pickton’s near-fatal stabbing of a Vancouver prostitute at his farm in March, 1997. Pickton was barely known to police at that point. While women were going missing from Lower Mainland streets, there was still no inkling they might have been murdered, let alone by a serial killer.
The stabbing was an ugly but straightforward case that Staff Sgt. Connor conducted quickly. Both Pickton and the prostitute whom he had repeatedly stabbed were interviewed, and conclusions were easily drawn.
The woman’s story became eerily familiar: She was “working” in Vancouver’s crime-infested Downtown Eastside when Pickton approached and offered her $100 for sexual favours. She climbed into his pickup truck, and Pickton drove her to his Port Coquitlam farm. He escorted her inside his filthy mobile home, where they had sex. Afterwards, Pickton refused payment. “Suddenly from behind Pickton put a handcuff on her,” reads a report made by Staff Sgt. Connor, released to the public last week.
A violent struggle ensued. The prostitute, who cannot be named by court order, grabbed a filleting knife with an eight-inch blade and swung at Pickton, slashing his throat “almost from ear to ear.”
Pickton took the knife from her and retaliated, stabbing her, “to the hilt of the knife, in the chest,” reads Staff Sgt. Connor’s report. They stumbled outside the trailer and the fight continued, until Pickton fell to the ground. The woman, bleeding profusely, ran away and flagged down a car.
According to Staff Sgt. Connor’s report, the woman “died” in a local hospital emergency room but was revived. Pickton was also treated in hospital. He admitted to having stabbed the woman, but claimed not to have provoked the attack. He was charged with attempted murder, and released on bail.
Four days after the attack, Staff Sgt. Connor prepared an incident summary, distributed to police across B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
“It has been determined that [the stabbing victim] is an East Hastings area hooker and Pickton is known to frequent that area weekly,” it read. “Given the violence shown by Pickton toward prostitutes and women in general, this information is being forwarded to your attention should you have similar offences.”
The attempted murder charge was dropped, according to notes prepared by Staff Sgt. Connor, because the victim was a heroin addict and presented herself late to interviews with Crown counsel.
Regardless, Pickton became stuck on Staff Sgt. Connor’s radar. Over the next two years until his promotion from corporal, the Mountie would build his Pickton file.
Staff Sgt. Connor would heard from other women who had encountered the “creepy” pig farmer, women who had lived to talk about it. He would also hear stories about women who hadn’t survived. Those stories, incredible as they first seemed, added to a body of evidence that he could not simply sweep aside.
Between April 1997 and April 1998, eight more women from the Downtown Eastside were reported missing. Their names were added to a list of cases that would keep growing.
In July, 1998, police received a valuable tip. A man called a Crime Stoppers hotline and described someone called “Willie.” He used prostitutes and kept a collection of their clothing and personal items inside his trailer, the tipster said. Willie had recently been in a knife fight with a prostitute. Willie had boasted to others that he could easily dispose of human bodies if he wished, by putting them through a meat grinder.
[caption id="attachment_101504" align="alignnone" width="620" caption="Ian Lindsay/Postmedia News"]<img class="size-full wp-image-101504" title="Coquitlam RCMP and members of the Missing Women task force search Robert Pickton's farm in 2002." src="http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/m-sun0207-missingfarm10.jpg&quot; alt="" width="620" height="465" />[/caption]
A week later, the same tipster called Crime Stoppers again, and said Willie might be responsible for the “missing prostitutes.” Willie, he added, lived on a farm in Port Coquitlam.
Vancouver police detective Lori Shenher tracked down the tipster, whose name is Bill Hiscox. She introduced him to Staff Sgt. Connor. It became clear to both officers that Mr. Hiscox was passing along information he had gleaned from a close Pickton associate, a woman named Lisa Yelds.
“Even at this stage of the investigation,” Staff Sgt. Connor wrote with hindsight, in records filed at the inquiry, “given what I knew of Pickton, I felt this person certainly could have been responsible for attacks on other prostitutes. I was not absolutely convinced on the homicides, as like most investigators of the time period, we all asked where are the bodies. Even though I was sure Pickton was capable.”
Staff Sgt. Connor was informed that Pickton was killing prostitutes as “pay back” for the 1997 knifing incident on his farm.
More sources came forward, and potential witnesses were identified and approached. By mid-1999, Staff Sgt. Connor wanted to launch an undercover operation on another known Pickton associate, Lynn Ellingsen. She had told police sources that she’d once picked up a prostitute with Pickton, that she’d later seen him skinning the woman’s body inside his barn. Ms. Ellingsen would eventually became a key Crown witness at Pickton’s serial murder trial. Thanks in part to Ms. Ellingsen’s testimony, a jury convicted Pickton of six counts of second degree murder. Another 20 murder charges laid against him were later stayed.
But in 1999, she wanted nothing to do with authorities. She denied everything to police. “There was no doubt in my mind that Pickton and Ellingsen were involved in the murders of prostitutes,” Staff Sgt. Connor recalled, in documents tabled at the inquiry. “It was suggested by some members [that an undercover operation on Ellingsen] would be a waste of time and money. That she was ‘crazy,’ cocaine addicted and hallucinated and what she saw was actually a pig hanging in the barn and not a human...There was a difference of opinion as to whether the information [was] reliable enough for the investigation to continue.”
Staff Sgt. Connor looked for other investigative routes. He recommended that surveillance be conducted on Pickton. Some attempts were made, then abandoned. Pickton had been alerted to the surveillance, Staff Sgt. Connor discovered.
In late August, 1999, Staff Sgt. Connor was promoted from corporal and pulled from the case. He requested secondment back to the investigation. His request was denied. New RCMP investigators were assigned; they made a series of unfortunate mistakes, the inquiry has heard. And Pickton kept on killing, until his arrest in February, 2002.
The inquiry resumes Tuesday, with testimony from former VPD criminal profiler Kim Rossmo. Staff Sgt. Zalys, Insp. Moulton and Det. Const. Shenher are among the other officers expected to testify before hearings conclude April 30.
<em>
National Post
<a href="mailto:bhutchinson@nationalpost.com">bhutchinson@nationalpost.com</a></em>

ReutersThese undated photos show 9 of the 26 women Robert Pickton is suspected of murdering. Police involved in the investigations will testify next week, at the inquiry in B.C.

The most panned knit, however, has us quizzical. It’s the chunky knit, red-white-and-blue explosion of stars, stripes, rings and patch-covered shawl-collar cardigan created by Ralph Lauren for Team USA. The nicest thing we can say is that at least the $395 sweaters are (unlike the last time) now Made in the USA. We are blinded by the, shall way, enthusiastically patriotic design – busier and more hideous even than Mr. Darcy’s awful Christmas sweater in Bridget Jones’ Diary. Did someone lose a bet? Panning down, we do admit to liking the retro alpine lace-up boots, official patch, red shoelaces and all, but wonder why Team USA didn’t wear their navy pea coats into the stadium. Could it be how uncannily similar – right down to a wide stripe near the hip – they are to the Hudson’s Bay Team Canada style?

How Hwee Young/FileTeam USA enter the stadium during the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games at the Fisht Olympic Stadium, Sochi, Russia.

To psychologists, courage, like its opposite cowardice, is not an internal state of mind but an external process. It requires not only bravery, but also success, just as cowardice requires both fear and failureTo psychologists, courage, like its opposite cowardice, is not an internal state of mind but an external process. It requires not only bravery, but also success, just as cowardice requires both fear and failure.
Both also demand a certain perfection in the results. For example, of the 74 people awarded the Carnegie Medal in 2008 for “saving or attempting to save” another’s life, a study found, only one left someone unrescued.
“It’s sort of like you have to do it or die trying,” said Cynthia Pury, editor of The Psychology of Courage: Modern Research on an Ancient Virtue.
Cowardice, on the other hand, is as easy as falling into a lifeboat, which is how Francesco Schettino, 52, described his inglorious exit from the Costa Concordia after it was wrecked off the shores of a small Ligurian island, which he was trying to salute. It requires an appreciation of the risks, a recognition of the noble goal of saving lives, followed by “complete inertia,” as a judge put it in releasing into house arrest the man now known as “Captain Coward,” the skipper who became Gilligan.
[np-related]
“Instead of above and beyond, he kind of went below and too short,” said Prof. Pury of Clemson University. “Fear can be a part of it, but it doesn’t have to be. The real issue is risk: Do you have an objective sense of risk to yourself? If yes, and if it’s a morally good or you believe valuable thing to do, then it might be courageous.”
Likewise, failure in the face of fear — in this case total and perfect failure, brought about for no good reason, followed by a wilful refusal to help the needy — makes the case for cowardice, even without the legal duty of being in charge of a vessel. Women and children first might be a bit of quaintly sexist chivalry, but captain first is a moral outrage, not least when the boat is within shouting distance of the shore.
[caption id="attachment_132192" align="alignnone" width="620" caption="VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty Images"]<img src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/508312422.jpg&quot; alt="" title="The Costa Concordia on Friday." width="620" height="413" class="size-full wp-image-132192" />[/caption]
Courage, like the other virtues, has been philosophized for centuries, but only recently has it fallen under the gaze of science, and firm conclusions are elusive.
The approach has been to break up the idea into physical courage, the kind most commonly praised, in which risk to life and health is overcome in pursuit of a noble goal; moral courage, in which a person stands on principle against the influence of peers or society; and vital courage, in which a person overcomes a private challenge, such as a phobia, and which is rarely celebrated in public.
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It is unclear whether a person who excels at one kind of courage is likely to excel at another, or what psychological traits predict them, or whether someone can be reasoned, pressured or ordered to be courageous. Studies on bystanders in emergencies suggest that it is better to assign one person responsibility in a crisis, rather than a general plea to the crowd, because it solves the problem of the reluctant volunteer who thinks someone else will help.
But because they are defined as external events, rather than internal feelings, courage and cowardice are traits that emerge from specific opportunities, themselves quite rare.
When Chesley Sullenberger landed a passenger jet on the Hudson River, he became a classic American hero, but having saved himself, he still could have been a coward. Instead, his refusal to leave the submerged airplane until he was sure he was the last person inside made him properly courageous, whereupon he stepped safely out onto the wing, soon to receive the key to New York. Where Capt. Schettino is going, if he is convicted on charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship, they will not give him keys.
“It is challenging to come up with a study in which somebody is not going to be in any absolute danger, because ethically you can’t do that,” Prof. Pury said, and mentioned a failed proposal to experiment with soldiers, which was criticized on the grounds that courage cannot be artificially elicited, true fear cannot be measured and overcoming fictional fear is not real courage.
Besides, overcoming fear is a poor measure for courage, because it does not capture those who are courageously unafraid. Recklessness and courage can coincide — epitomized by Christopher McCandless, whose story is told in Into the Wild, about a solo adventure in Alaska — but risk-taking on its own is not courageous, and as an example Prof. Pury cites the show Jackass, the game of chicken, or the initiation ritual of lying on a road at night.
“To the person, it probably seems brave. It probably does require overcoming fear. But the benefit of it is so trivial that it’s not courageous,” she said.
As the philosopher R.W. Hepburn described it, “For an act to be courageous, as distinct from reckless, or stubborn, or obstinate, the risks must be reasonable in relation to the goal, and the goal itself soundly appraised.”
[caption id="attachment_131552" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="National Post Graphics"]<a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/17/graphic-salvaging-the-costa-concordia-cruise-liner/"><img src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/fo0118_concordiasalvage2.jpg&quot; alt="" title="CLICK TO ENLARGE" width="300" height="631" class="size-full wp-image-131552" /></a>[/caption]
By that reasoning, for an act to be cowardly, as opposed to cautious or timid, the unachieved goal must be such that failure to take the risk is an offence in itself. Both the courageous and the cowardly choose to be that way.
Beppe Severgnini, author of Mamma mia! Berlusconi’s Italy Explained for Posterity and Friends Abroad, said Capt. Schettino’s downfall was his failed attempt at “la bella figura,” the pointlessly beautiful sight of a ship cruising past a seaside village, and he pointed to “a theatrical tendency in Italy, which is both part of our charm and also at the root of our problems, and not just on the high seas.”
Set against this Italian figurehead is another one, the stoic Captain Gregorio Maria De Falco of the Livorno Port Authority, who took charge in a crisis, and called Capt. Schettino to co-ordinate the rescue only to learn he was in a lifeboat. When Capt. Schettino protested that it was dark, he could not see, and the ship was tipping over, Capt. DeFalco angrily spoke the immortal words that ushered Capt. Schettino into the coward’s gallery of global culture, alongside the Cowardly Lion, Robert Ford, George Costanza, Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin.
“And so what? You want go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Get on that prow of the boat using the pilot ladder and tell me what can be done, how many people there are and what their needs are. Now!”
Prof. Pury compared the global scorning of Capt. Schettino, equal in vigour to the praise of heroes like Capt. Sullenberger, to the treatment of soldiers who desert in battle, whose image has improved over time with increased understanding of the human response to trauma.
On Friday, the Costa Concordia’s chaplain told reporters Capt. Schettino wept in his arms on the dock after the sinking.
“I sort of feel sorry for the captain. Very few people’s failures to live up to job expectations are that public,” said Prof. Pury. “It’s always lovely to have one person to blame. Looking at systemic factors makes it hard, and I think we have evolved to do things like that. You can see faces in anything. We see human beings in everything.”
<em>National Post</em>
<em>• Email: <a href="mailto:jbrean@nationalpost.com">jbrean@nationalpost.com</a></em>
[caption id="attachment_132194" align="alignnone" width="620" caption="REUTERS/Ciro De Luca"]<img src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/italy-ship-6.jpg&quot; alt="" title=""Go on board, damn it!"" width="620" height="356" class="size-full wp-image-132194" />[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_132193" align="alignnone" width="620" caption=" REUTERS/Centro subacquei dei Carabinieri"]<img src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/italy-ship-5.jpg&quot; alt="" title="A Carabinieri scuba diver inspects the Costa Concordia cruise ship on Thursday." width="620" height="415" class="size-full wp-image-132193" />[/caption]

SHOWING THEIR STRIPES

Our 221-strong Team Canada’s colours are red white and black, with a wide stripe being one of the unifying design elements on warm-up jackets, tops, sweaters and pants and by Hudson’s Bay. The showpiece for the Olympics, however, is the red duffle jacket with dark toggles and a single black stripe near the hem, mimicking the border stripe of the historic Canadian department store’s signature point blanket stripe. Clothing items in the athletes’ kit all made in Canada, whereas the replica attire for civilians made offshore — namely, China.

Canada’s colours are is not dissimilar from the scheme of team New Zealand, whose puffers and neck mufflers and parkas (and rumoured, onesies underneath) come in that trio. Georgia’s uniforms are also in our Canadian flag colours, both red and white with folkloric trim – Poland, too, has that traditional embellishment, only on ombré grey suits.

Tune in here starting at 6 p.m. to watch the first-ever YouTube Music Awards live, and follow along with our commentary and by-the-minute updates[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG4xaLn2W6s&w=940&h=529]
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The first-ever YouTube Music Awards took place Nov. 3 at 6 p.m., and it was a weird and wonderful affair. The 90-minute event, hosted by actor Jason Schwartzman and comedian Reggie Watts, took place at New York City's Pier 36 and featured performances from Lady Gaga, Eminem and Arcade Fire. The performances were directed and filmed as "live music videos," with their featured musicians often playing a supporting role.
Among the night's big winners was Eminem, who took home the prize for artist of the year, and K-Pop Group Girls' Generation, who snagged the night's big upset with their prize for Music Video of the Year, beating out Miley Cyrus' We Can't Stop and Maclkemore's <em>Same Love</em>, among others.
Missed the ceremony? Watch it above – and check out our updates, photos and more from Sunday night below:

Other stripes were retro zags across the torso — like Slovenia’s lime, turquoise and white ski jackets, Bulgaria’s 1970s snowsuits with avocado green stripes (you could picture a Bond movie Roger Moore at Gstaad in it), or Dominica’s first foray into winter Olympics with curvy colour blocking patterns on groovy snowsuits in navy red and white. Our favourite iteration is probably the colourful zig-zag trim of the scarves and sleeves on the olive green-brown boiled wool sweaters from Latvia, though. They reminded up of a 1960s art teacher, in a good way, and are probably the only item of any country’s athletic wardrobe we’d ever wear on the street.

John Macdougall/AFP/Getty ImagesBulgaria's flag bearer, alpine skier Maria Kirkova, leads her national delegation during the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics at the Fisht Olympic Stadium on February 7, 2014 in Sochi.

John Macdougall/AFP/Getty ImagesLatvia's delegation parades during the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics at the Fisht Olympic Stadium on February 7, 2014 in Sochi.

BRIGHT AND DRAB SURPRISES

Surely visible by George Clooney and Sandra Bullock in space, it’s a photo finish between the official Sochi volunteers (who look like they’ve just crossed the finish line of one of those paint-splattering Color Runs) winter sports powerhouse Germany’s rainbow duffle coats (the standard-issue floral red snow pants swapped for white by some athletes), with matching red floral toques, all by Bogner – although given the controversy about these being Putin’s anti-gay games, the colours are not meant to be symbolic of protest.

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At the extreme other end, the shiny down jackets for Britain are a deep purplish navy and trimmed in maroon – inspiration not exactly pulled from the Union Jack. Another surprise: the flat green of Ireland’s suits, flecked with orange, recall fatigues. South Korea’s stiffly padded black and white puffers by Fila recall penguins (and early Russian cosmonauts), with stripes at the shoulders like the swipe of a tiger.

National PostCLICK TO ENLARGE

Andrej Isakovic/AFP/Getty ImagesIreland's flag bearer, downhill skier Conor Lyne leads his national delegation during the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics at the Fisht Olympic Stadium on February 7, 2014 in Sochi.

A bit like Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha (minus the grunge), the Swedish female athletes layered leggings under short skirt, with the innovation of an asymmetrical diagonal zipper on their topcoats. By H&M, of course. Orange is the new black for the Dutch, who go chic with little black suits (as do Croatia, tipped in white). We rather like the black, blue and yellow pattern, like an elaborate textile or traditional pysanka Easter egg design, like a wax batik process. Similar patterns are on the spring runways, as it happens. The devil can be in the details: Montenegro’s slashed snow pants resemble the flames on Hot Rod cars of our childhood, whereas the Czech Republic sleeves, trimmed in red and black motifs, recalled the suits of a deck of cards.

Tatyana Zenkovich/FileNEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 03: Singer Lady Gaga attends the YouTube Music Awards 2013 on November 3, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

Tatyana Zenkovich/FileNEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 03: Musician M.I.A. attends the YouTube Music Awards 2013 on November 3, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

Tyler Anderson / National PostHumberwood Downs Junior-Middle Academy and its campus is a model the City of Toronto may wish to study when planning new public infrastructure: one that is affordable
and encourages teamwork. Humberwood Centre houses the public school, a Catholic School, a Toronto Public Library branch, a community centre and a 280-space daycare.

BUSINESS TIME

Under the long white parkas, the Japanese went for tailored grey suiting — more Brooks Brothers than bobsledders — with jackets in wool cashmere (the uniforms are by Matsuzakaya). The French and their official design partner Lacoste were also understated: for the men, down coats in grey flannel – as trim three-button blazers for the men, and longer belted robe coats with wide peak lapels for the women, both with wide horizontal quilting. Perhaps inspired by Ralph Lauren’s example of supersized polo pony logo (the better for TV cameras to see it at a distance) René Lacoste’s signature crocodile is writ similarly large, in the French flag stripe. Nonetheless, très chic.

Tyler Anderson / National PostHumberwood Downs Junior-Middle Academy and its campus is a model the City of Toronto may wish to study when planning new public infrastructure: one that is affordable
and encourages teamwork. Humberwood Centre houses the public school, a Catholic School, a Toronto Public Library branch, a community centre and a 280-space daycare.

Tyler Anderson/National Post

As expected, the Russians stole the show with the most explicitly ornate and patriotic costumed ensembles. For women, embroidered folkloric ric-rac on hooded kaftan coat-inspired parkas, further trimmed at the edges and cuffs with furry white; on the men, traditional ushanka (or trooper) hats with shearling flaps, not unlike Canada’s own trapper hats, and overcoat in the military marshal style, with wide contrasting lapels trimmed in sheepskin, too. All worn over trousers in vivid red – Russian red, natch.

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesAs Mississauga grapples with unprecedented budgetary pressures and a proposed 7.4% property-tax hike on the city’s portion of the bill, a group of residents are banding together to become “the voice of the taxpayers.”
John Walmark, former president of a Ward 1 homeowners’ association, announced the launch Friday of a citizen oversight committee to keep an eye on Mississauga’s “fiscal mess.” He also cited concerns about accountability and the city’s governance structure.
“We all have had enough and can’t take this anymore,” Mr. Walmark wrote in a memo announcing the launch. As chair of the new committee, which also includes former politicians and businessmen, Mr. Walmark urged citizens to turn out for a budget committee meeting at City Hall next Wednesday to voice their concerns.
“We want to highlight the good... and put [councillors’] feet to fire when they are off base,” Mr. Walmark said in an interview.
<em>Megan O’Toole, National Post</em>

Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

We’ll give it to them — it’s the first time they’ve made positive headlines, possibly the last.

Airlines flying to Winter Olympics host Russia were warned today to watch for toothpaste tubes containing materials that could be turned into a bomb, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

The official declined to elaborate on the intelligence that sparked the warning, which was sent to U.S. and foreign airlines, just two days before the start of the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia.

Security at Sochi is tight in response to threats of terror strikes by Islamic militants. The Black Sea city is just a few hundred miles from the North Caucasus region, where Russia has been battling Islamic extremists.

The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the warning and asked for anonymity. It was reported earlier by ABC News.

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the agency “regularly shares relevant information with domestic and international partners, including those associated with international events such as the Sochi Olympics.”

“We are not aware of a specific threat to the homeland at this time,” the DHS said in the statement. “This routine communication is an important part of our commitment to making sure we meet that priority.”

Delta Air Lines Inc. is alone among the major U.S. carriers in serving Russia, with one daily Moscow flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Spokesmen for Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines declined to discuss security issues, as is customary in the industry.

Baggage Rules

The Transportation Security Administration, which is part of DHS, restricts the size of carry-on containers of gels and liquids, including toothpaste tubes, to no more than 3.4 ounces (100 milliliters). The limit doesn’t apply to checked bags, which are scanned by explosives detection machines.

Sochi, which lies west of the Caucasus Mountains, borders one of the most economically distressed regions of Russia, stretching from Chechnya to Dagestan. A separatist movement in Chechnya grew into an Islamist insurgency that took its fight into neighboring provinces and which Russia has struggled to suppress.

Three suicide attacks last year rocked Volgograd, about halfway between Moscow and Sochi. Russian security forces staged a raid in Dagestan earlier today, killing the leader of an extremist group suspected in two of the attacks.

Russian Security

Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to keep Sochi safe by locking down the seaside resort city of about 345,000, deploying 40,000 troops and state of-the-art equipment.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said today that the U.S. has 140 people, including FBI agents, Homeland security personnel and the military working with the Russians on security.

The Olympics in Sochi will be as “safe as you can make any large public event in a place where obviously we all know there have been some threats of late,” Kerry said in an interview on CNN. “We feel that everything has been done that can be done to try to guarantee people safety and security.”

As many as 10,000 Americans are expected to visit the Black Sea resort for the games, according to four Obama administration officials who briefed reporters on Jan. 24 on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. has warned athletes and fans planning to attend the games to be aware of recent terrorist threats from Islamic militants, and the Pentagon has said it’s prepared to evacuate Americans from Russia if needed.

President Barack Obama was briefed yesterday on security and support for U.S. athletes and “he was assured by his team that they are taking all appropriate steps regarding the safety of Americans,” the White House said in a statement.

The U.S. also has moved two ships, the USS Mount Whitney and the USS Taylor into the Black Sea over the past two days to be ready to assist in any security operations or evacuations in the event of a terrorist attack.

TORONTO — The government is warning Canadians to carefully consider whether to attend the Winter Olympics that begin in Sochi, Russia in two weeks after Islamist terrorists in the North Caucasus threatened to attack the event.

In an advisory late Friday, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and the ministers of state of foreign affairs and sport said the Games were an “attractive” terrorist target and that airports and border crossings were “particularly vulnerable.”

The extraordinary travel advisory said the “most likely threat” to the event was Imarat Kavkaz, an umbrella group for various armed factions fighting to impose their harsh version of Islamic law in the North Caucasus region east of Sochi.

The group’s leader, Doku Umarov, released a video last July that called on his followers to attack the Olympics, the ministers said. That was followed last week by a second video threatening the games by the terror group Ansar al-Sunna.

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The government said it was “working with the appropriate Russian government agencies as well as like-minded allies” to safeguard the Olympics but also bluntly suggested that those thinking of attending should think twice.

“Canadians should be aware that, although the host country will have special security arrangements in place at Olympic venues, this does not eliminate the risk of terrorist attacks,” Mr. Blaney said. “The decision to travel despite these concerns rests with the traveller, and such decisions should be considered carefully.”

While security has been a concern at Olympic events since Munich in 1972, when Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes, it is a particular issue at Sochi because of its close proximity to an active insurgency led by armed Islamists who share al-Qaeda’s commitment to extreme violence.

A confidential Canadian intelligence report obtained by the National Post last month called Umarov a “fervent Islamist” who subscribes to al-Qaeda doctrine that legitimizes the killing of Western civilians.

While he had called off the targeting of civilians in February 2012 amid bad publicity, Umarov lifted his moratorium six months ago and wants attacks on the Sochi Olympics, urging “maximum force … to disrupt these satanic games.”

Canadians travelling to the Sochi 2014 Winter Games should take sensible precautions and maintain a high level of vigilance

According to a summary of the video in an intelligence report, he said: “They plan to hold the Olympics on the bones of our ancestors, on the bones of many, many dead Muslims buried on our land by the Black Sea. We as mujahedin [soldiers of God] are required not to allow that, using any methods that Allah allows us.”

Titled “Advice for Canadians Attending Sochi 2014 Winter Games,” the advisory said Ottawa would have consular services available but that travelers “need to take responsibility for their own safety” and should use the Registration Service for Canadians Abroad program.

“Canadians travelling to the Sochi 2014 Winter Games should take sensible precautions and maintain a high level of vigilance and be aware of their personal surroundings at all times and in all places. They should avoid demonstrations, exercise caution in public places, monitor local developments and follow the advice of local authorities,” said Lynne Yelich, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Consular services.